In her usual manner, Julia posed question after question about my father's death to better understand what happened. As I tried to explain the events of the day as I best remembered them, she asked me in frustration, why didn't anyone call 9-1-1? And it occurred to me that 9-1-1 didn't exist back then. I thought that most likely an ambulance or a coronor's wagen came but that we didn't have 9-1-1. It came as a shock to me that things that have been created or invented are just taken for granted, as if these things were always available to us. How many other things have been created in our lifetimes that we just accept? I'm not talking the big obvious things like cell phones, the internet, video's but the small things like 9-1-1, trauma teams, EMTs - when and how did all of this come to be?
Interesting enough, the next night on ER, they had a character that played the man who invented the system and brought trauma teams in. I wondered how much of this was true but if there was one person who really started this, God bless him and every other person who comes up with these ideas.
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