No pics, just an update on calling 911

And not an update from Kat, either. I'll post pics later this weekend.

As I sit up with Kat at 3:37 AM watching Sesame Street, desperate for her to go back to sleep, I figured I'd post a warning for folks to pay attention to exactly where you are when you are out and about in the event of an emergency that requires a 911 cell call.

We went to our neighborhood playground yesterday, and Kat choked on a Honeystinger fruit chew, which is apparently exactly the same size as her throat. I handed my phone to Ann from Calgary (who had been in town for an hour) and asked her to call 911, which she did, while I was hitting Kat on the back. Our neighborhood is like a rabbit warren, with street names changing each time the street turns and they are all numbers, and I had NO IDEA what streets we were actually near. She kept telling them the Tam'O'Shanter playground/tennis courts, but apparently there is an actual Tam O'Shanter park, and this was NOT it. Luckily we got the thing out of Kat's throat and she was fine, but we were still on the phone with 9-1-1 trying to tell them where we were. They still wanted to check her out.

I eventually had to go to the street to read a house number (and those folks were smart enough to list the house # AND the street #, as I still wouldn't have had a clue what the street name was). So my mistakes (aside from giving her the damn thing), were not knowing exactly where we were so I could relate it to another person and/or not having Ann run for the nearest house and a landline, as they then would have known immediately where we were.

The ironic thing was that I knew the EMS technology was not caught up to the cell phone GPS technology, and that we'd have to tell them where we were, but even with the help of the map on an iPhone (that showed the other park) I could not tell them physically where we were. It was awful.

So, you cannot rely on the cell phone alone, the GPS does NOT tell EMS where you are (and who knows, the call could get relayed somewhere weird, another town, another state), you HAVE to know where you are and if there is a 911 emergency, it's best to try to make the call from a landline, as it will shorten response and talking time dramatically.

As it was, we got the thing out and she was fine, and I never panicked, as I knew that help would be there shortly if we couldn't.....but I'm not sure that they would have been there in time. They knew that the emergency had passed, so they were not under lights/siren when they did come, but it must have been close to ten minutes.....

And one more tip from my mountaineering safety class, if you're out hiking, etc, put the LOCAL ranger station phone # in your phone, as that will also speed up response times, especially in the mtns, as cell phone calls have been known to get bounced across the country from mountains.

And get your CPR certification and keep it updated!

That's my advice for the day.