I do think the case for medical alert systems is pretty compelling. For example, my aunt recently had a heart attack. It came out of nowhere. She’s skinny as a rail and really wouldn’t present any likelihood of having a major medical problem. And she isn’t even that old. Not even 60 yet. When she had the heart attack she didn’t even know she was having it; she just started feeling bad and told her coworkers she was going home. Luckily one of them was a trained first aid responder, and instead of letting her go home he called the ambulance.
If she had gone home she would have been alone for the next 6 hours until her husband came home. And her house is 20 minutes farther from the hospital, down a long country road and through a locked gate.
Had she gone home and then had the heart attack progressed, she might have been incapacitated before she could reach the phone. In that case a button — if she was wearing it — could have dialed the phone for her and summoned help.
Personally, I would love the peace of mind of having a system that could summon emergency help whenever and wherever I needed it. I would like my parents to have a system like this, and I’d even love for my kids to have a system that did this.
But the problem, of course, is that the real world isn’t that easy. There’s no simple system that can cover you anywhere, though systems get better every year.
But I did promise you information about when you don’t need a medical alert system.
In my opinion (and it’s just that, an opinion), you don’t need a medical alert system if you’re always around people, you always carry your cell phone and it’s got a charge, or you have actually made a conscious decision that life is inherently risky and you don’t want to be protected every second of the day.
Next step: Will the person you’re buying a medical alert system for actually use it?
