Personally, I consider the police and fire stations services, so that's where my post bases off of.
My dad is an extremely active guy. He's about to hit 54 and insists on spending the majority of his day outdoors working on the yard, garden, pool, or general maintenance. He's never had health problems (except for his inherited high blood pressure and skin cancer from growing up in Miami without sunscreen). So two summers ago, he went outdoors to trim some bushes right up against the house.
He came back indoors ten minutes later. Now, I and my mom had been watching him from the front window, where the bushes were located. We looked away for a moment and that's when, apparently, he was stung by some "flying black insects, not hornets or wasps." He just grabbed some insect bite relief and rubbed it on his forearm - the three spots he got hit, maybe.
He waited a few minutes, assuming he may have hit a nest back there. He finally went back outside and decided it was safe to continue working. Literally two minutes later, he comes flying back inside freaking out. My father is incredibly calm, and to see him freak out makes me insanely scared. His arm was suddenly broken out in a rash from his hand to the end of his forearm, and there was already a rash forming on his stomach, where he hadn't been hit. My mom checked his back and could see red splotches appearing there.
My mom finally got him into the car and they drove off (obviously speeding) to get to the hospital or anywhere that could help him. We live rather close to a hospital, so calling 911 would have taken longer. My mother, the opposite of my father, couldn't calm down enough to drive carefully, so she pulled into a small scale fire station. She and my dad went to the door and the men there took them in.
What proceeded is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard. The men currently at the center sat my dad down, but did no more. They just looked at his rashes and then spent quite some time deliberating what to do. I'm only telling this from what my mom said, but basically, they were saying "Well, I don't know what it is. What do you think we should do?"
By this time, my dad's breathing is getting short, so my mom finally (outraged) asks them to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital. After standing there for a bit more, they finally call for an ambulance, which arrives shortly.
The minute the people (are they EMTs?) look at my dad's rash, they grab an EpiPen from their truck and stick him with it. It took them all of one minute, versus the firemen's however long, to determine what it was. And to top it all off?
One of the firemen looks under the cabinet there, pulls out an EpiPen, and goes "I guess we should have given him this, huh?"
So, the ambulance took my dad to the hospital where they found out he developed an allergic reaction to insect stings over time. This is the first sign he's ever had of an allergy of any sort, so we had no idea and no remedies on hand. Now, though, he's sure to keep an EpiPen with him whenever he goes outside to work on the bushes, and we all know how to use it.
It just irks me that those firemen, who I always learned had at least some medical training, didn't think that maybe the rash was an allergic reaction. And before people get snarky, my mother did tell them that he had been stung a few times by an insect of some sort.
And even if the men hadn't thought it safe to give him the EpiPen, they should have called the ambulance as soon as they knew they couldn't help him. My father's breathing was getting short, for God's sake.
Am I just being protective of my family, or am I justified in this complaint? Seems like they should have done something.