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Laura Ferguson
Windsor, ON
One night in mid-August, while getting ready for bed, Laura Ferguson tripped on a mat and struck her head on a hardwood floor. She went to bed with a migraine headache that persisted over the next two days. Then she began vomiting.
Medical staff at the walk-in clinic noticed Laura’s MedicAlert bracelet but didn’t check it, so when she told them she had a migraine they believed her and recommended that she go to the hospital to get intravenous drugs. Not wanting to wait forever in an emergency room, Laura, a retired nurse, asked for oral medication instead and went home with pain medication and a sleep aid.
That night, Laura woke up feeling dehydrated and got up to get a drink of water. This time, she fell down a flight of stairs.
The next day, with Laura not feeling any better, her husband dialed 911. When the paramedics arrived and asked what’s the matter. Laura said, “I have a migraine.” She totally forgot that she fell and struck her head and didn’t mention that she takes Coumadin, a blood thinner, for a heart condition.
However, the paramedics checked Laura’s MedicAlert bracelet, saw the notation, “Anticoagulant” and promptly said, “She’s bleeding.” They asked for all of Laura’s medications and raced her to hospital by ambulance.
It was only after Laura woke up in an intensive care unit that she learned that when she hit her head, she had bruised blood vessels in the frontal lobes of her brain and it was the pressure from that bleeding that mimicked a migraine. Left untreated, it could have resulted in problems with memory, speech, walking or worse. Laura says, “When the paramedics read my medical information they knew exactly what they were dealing with. If someone hadn’t checked my bracelet, I could have died. I am alive today because of MedicAlert.”
With time, Laura has recovered from the experience and has been advised by a neurologist to discontinue Coumadin because it could trigger a bleed. Her own advice is: “Make sure that health professionals check your MedicAlert ID. It’s there for a reason.”
