Motorists entering or leaving Rye via Udimore Road on Thursday morning could have been forgiven for thinking that there had been a major incident at a small block of flats, if the number of emergency vehicles parked outside was anything to go by.
In fact, at around 10am an ambulance had been called to a flat at Badger Gate, Udimore Road to take a bariatric patient to hospital. Upon arrival it was discovered that the patient was so seriously obese that it was not possible to remove them from the flat by normal methods, nor was the ambulance suitable for the transport of someone this size.
As a result a specialist ambulance and crew were brought from Ashford, and Sussex Fire and Rescue were called in to assist in the removal of the patient. Having transferred them on to a trolley designed for the purpose, the operation then involved removing patio doors from the back entrance to the ground floor flat and constructing a temporary roadway over soft ground round to the car park at the front in which, by now, some seven emergency vehicles and 10 or twelve crew members were gathered.
Great care had to be taken with the move and final, exhaustive checks of the patient were made before being lifted into the ambulance. Finally, some two hours after arrival the journey to hospital began.
A crew member from the Fire and Rescue service later commented that this sort of operation, while not common, was, nevertheless, being seen more often as the problems of obesity grew.
Photo: John Minter
