Life Alert

My father-in-law has Life Alert. (He is diabetic, blind, and one leg was amputated several years ago.) He has had this for several years, and is happy with it. My mother in law is a nurse and works 3rd shift, so he is home alone at night. While we live very close to him, and he calls a lot overnight for my hubby to come help him, but he has used the Life Alert. He was going into a diabetic coma and could not use the phone, so he pushed the button on his LifeAlert. It probably saved his life! My husband is a 911 Dispatcher, so he is familiar with both sides of the service for this. When the customer pushes the button for the Life Alert, a representative asks if they need help through the monitor. If the customer says yes I need help or they get no response, LifeAlert calls the people on their help list who have a key and can go check on them/help them. If it is serious, Life Alert also calls the local dispatch center and alerts them to what is going on. Our local Dispatch center then sends a police officer and sends an ambulance. We have had the Life Alert call and tell us that he fell out of bed and couldn't reach the phone to call us. So basically, it is a "middle man" to get the help the customer may need. In order for the service to work, the customer must be wearing the Life Alert necklace/watch 24/7.

My husband once took a call while at work from Life Alert that their customer had pushed the button for help, but there was no response. Life Alert had already contacted a key holder, but my hubby sent the police and ambulance also. The police officer got to the house first, and could see the man laying on the floor unconscious through the window. They busted the door in and had him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital before the keyholder even got there! Long story short, make sure that whoever you use as an emergency contact/keyholder is close, and able to respond quickly!!

Sorry this is so long, but I hope the info is helpful......

Missy

[DianaB]

We used to have a landlady that had something like a Life Alert. We had a key to her house so we were called as soon as there was a problem. She would be cleaning and bump the button and then she would have the TV up really loud and couldn't hear the phone ring when they checked on her so we'd have to run over and make sure that she was alright. We had to do that several times but we never had an emergency from it.