3 hours to get an ambulance

John Wooden - former UCLA men’s Basketball Coach

What? Yes, it took 3 hours to get an ambulance to John Wooden’s home after he fell and broke his collarbone, and wrist. Seems the family was more concerned with media coverage than in helping the 97 year old, former Bruin Coach. That is not sitting well with some on Campus, and brings up questions about the family’s motives.

3 hours?

The family was concerned about the presence of Bobby Brown (Mr. Whitney Houston) at the hospital, and it appears that the family did not give a whit about the coach’s pain.

LOS ANGELES — The expressed wishes of John Wooden and his family were for privacy during his hospital stay, after a fall at his Encino home last week left him with a hairline fracture of his left wrist and fractured left collarbone.

But Coach Ben Howland, who visited the Hall of Fame coach, expressed concern over the care Wooden received after he was found by Bruins trainer Tony Spino.

”He’s actually the one who found him, and was explaining to me how it took three hours to get an ambulance there to pick him up from Glendale,” Howland said.

Three hours? This is outrageous. What kind of family waits three hours to get an ambulance for a family member? A selfish one, that’s who.

”There was concern by someone that they wanted Coach to wait while he had his broken collarbone and broken wrist because there was someone else (singer Bobby Brown) in the hospital and so there was a bunch of media around, and the doctor was concerned that the media would see Coach Wooden come in so it was, ‘No, we’ll wait.’

“You’ll have to ask Tony — Tony can tell you the story, but pretty ridiculous. It was way over two hours before someone got there to take him to the hospital, which is really, really sad to hear.”

I agree coach, it’s ridiculous.

But Nan Muehlhausen, Wooden’s daughter, said that the time frame Howland had was not accurate.

”We did not wait three hours for an ambulance. That is not true,” she said.

She may not have waited, but it appears clear that the family was not very concerned with their dad’s pain. If this is true, this is outrageous and calls into question the family’s ability to care for their father.

Howland, who visited on Monday, said he thought Wooden still to be in pain.

“I think he’s in a lot of pain,” he said. ”His family is there basically around the clock just about, supporting him. We talked for just a minute and I didn’t want to be a bother. He was sleeping when I first got there and he kind of woke up. But he’s in a lot of pain, I think.”

Of course he is in pain, you break bones it hurts from the minute you do it.

7 or more hours?

It is possible, the LAT is reporting that the coach was injured for 7 or more hours before getting help.

We will start with the image of an injured 97-year-old John Wooden, alone on the floor of his condominium in Encino, for as long as seven hours last Thursday night and Friday morning.

And we will hasten to add that that image, while true, should not be grounds for any finger-pointing or assumptions of dereliction of duty by anybody.

That’s rich, the LAT not wanting ‘finger pointing’.

“You guys would get a kick out of this, and you should call Tony,” Howland continued. “It took three hours to get an ambulance to pick him up out of Glendale. There was concern by someone that they wanted Coach to wait while he had his broken wrist and collarbone, because there was somebody else in the hospital and there was a bunch of media around and the doctors were concerned the media would see Coach Wooden. And so it was like, no, no, wait.

“You have to ask Tony. He can tell you the story. Pretty ridiculous.”

Asking Tony, according to UCLA sports information director Marc Dellins, was not an option. Dellins said the family would not want the information revealed by Howland made public.

It was a decent try by Dellins, but he knew better. It was a news conference. One of the premier coaches in the game was talking about a legend, and with no apparent agenda other than concern.

While I understand UCLA’s concern, it’s very misguided and make it appear that something is amiss.

Later, Nan Muehlhausen, Wooden’s daughter, helped diffuse the situation by explaining that the Wooden family had made the decision to allow the ambulance delay because of its ongoing wish to retain its father’s dignity and not deliver him to a lobby full of paparazzi.

Muehlhausen said that the family was happy with the way the ambulance people handled things, happy with the doctors and didn’t think the ambulance saga had taken nearly three hours.

Diffuse the situation? How? By admitting the didn’t give a damn about the Coach? No one is questioning the ambulance service, we are questioning you and your behavior.

But from all this emerged more questions, the main ones being why a 97-year-old man still lives alone and how it came to pass that he had to survive alone on the floor for perhaps as long as seven hours.

What happened to no finger pointing? He wants to live alone, my great grandmother was the same. I can understand not going by every hour to check on the Coach. No one wants to insult him, and it’s his life.

John Wooden lives alone because he wants to. He cherishes his independence, and anybody who has an aging parent knows all about this.

Amen to that.

It is not like he sits alone all day, every day. He was ill recently with a bad cold, and Spino stayed through the night most nights for several weeks.

Interesting that his former co-worker spends more time with him than his family.

Had he not, Muehlhausen, or son Jim, or one of his dozens of grandchildren or great-grandchildren would have.

Then why did they not?

His fall was not his first. Nor was this the first time he has spent a night on the floor, alone and unable to get up. Long ago, Muehlhausen insisted, because he remained firm in his desire to live alone in the condo that is full of memories of his late wife, Nell, that he wear a medical alert device.

He relented, then had a fall and was found the next morning. According to a family friend, when asked why he didn’t push the button on the device, he responded that he had promised Nan that he would wear it, but he hadn’t promised that he would use it.

That is funny. Still does not excuse the holding the ambulance.

How much longer we will have Wooden is impossible to determine, even though, at 97, you start facing reality. That’s especially so when you look back on the month of March the last three years, a month that was once his prime time more than anybody else’s in college basketball. Is it meaningful or coincidence that he has been ill all three years during the heart of the NCAA tournament?

If I am not mistaken, this is a common time for falls and illness for the elderly. Changing seasons is a bad time for the elderly especially spring. It’s possible that he is wound up for the spring because of basketball, but I doubt it.

Hopefully when the coach goes, it will be swift and painless.