Dad displayed stroke symptoms last Friday evening. Rang 999, the phone operator talked me through the episode but apologised as there would be an 8 hour wait for an ambulance - somehow I got him into the car and drove him to A&E myself. He was seen by a doctor immediately.
By the time I had got to the hospital, got him out of the car and into his wheelchair my 87 year-old father seemed to have recovered. The doctor thought it was a sequence of mini strokes and ordered tests - bloods, CT scan, ECG, chest x-ray, and then we waited.
Many patients weren’t wearing masks. One woman took her loose mask off to cough. A young man whose female companion had fallen off her party shoe and damaged her ankle didn’t wear a mask at all, bought a wide variety of snacks and left the wrappers on the floor.