A WIDOW begged for an ambulance for two hours while desperately trying to save her husband who was dying in front of her.
Lesley Weekley, 73, who lives in Barry, had planned on taking her husband of 43 years, Rob, to hospital the next morning after he complained of sporadic discomfort similar to indigestion.
Mark Lewis/Media WalesLesley “begged” for an ambulance while performing CPR on her husband, Rob[/caption]
Mark Lewis/Media WalesLesley and her husband Rob at their home in Barry[/caption]
However, in the early hours of January 4, Rob woke with a tight chest, clammy, cold and incoherent.
His wife, who works at the University Hospital of Wales, said she called 999 and explained his worrying symptoms to a call handler.
“They said they had no ambulances available,” she explained.
Over the next two hours she called 999 four more times as Rob’s condition deteriorated.
The paramedics told Lesley Rob would have probably survived the heart attack had they been dispatched following the first call.
“At 2.36am I called again, and told the call handler that he had collapsed when he tried to get off the bed to go to the toilet,” she told Walesonline.
The call handler told her to give him aspirin and call again if he worsened.
At 2.55am she called again and explained that while he was breathing his pulse had stopped, he was lightheaded and had a tingling sensation – but received the same response.
The hospital worker phoned again at 3.11am, for a fifth time at 3.32am and “begged for an ambulance” as he had stopped breathing.
By the time paramedics arrived she had been doing CPR for 20 minutes to keep him alive, but after taking over she was told he was gone.
“I was exhausted and my hands had started to become slippery because I was sweating so much.
“After ten minutes of counting with the call handler I could hardly keep going. I just remember saying: ‘I can’t keep doing it.’
Despite efforts, Leslely couldn’t get a pulse, which she was later by the paramedics was because Rob’s blood pressure was so low and his body was shutting down.
“I stood there and watched them doing their best and pumping adrenaline into him, but he’d gone. I think he’d already died by the time they’d reached us,” she explained.
“The paramedics were absolutely brilliant and did everything they possibly could. I knew he’d died when they told me,” she added.
Rob, a retired architect from Rhoose, was “loved and well-respected”, especially in music and rugby circles.
London Welsh Rugby Club paid tribute to him on its social media channels, saying he will be “sorely missed”.
Liam Williams, of the Welsh Ambulance Service, said: “We are really sorry to hear about such a distressing incident, and we send our deepest condolences to Mrs Weekley and her family.
“This is not the service we aim to deliver, and we know that this must have been a very upsetting and traumatic experience for Mrs Weekley.”
Ambulance response times have worsened significantly over the past two years.
Services are being crippled by staff shortages, funding cuts and a surge in demand post-Covid.
The Healthcare Safety Investigations Branch, which investigates incidents in the NHS, has warned about the risk to patients.
One of the main issues causing the wait times is the long delays crews face at hospitals.
The handover of patients should be done within 15 minutes – but in November, a third of handovers took more than 30 minutes.
By the end of the December, this had risen to more than 40 per cent, according to NHS data.
Unions say patient safety is one of the key reasons ambulance staff are striking.
Monday saw the second walkout of ambulance crews in England and Wales.