By Souls of Silver
An ambulance is, on a surface level, an annoying encounter for most people. But in reality, ambulances are almost always saddening, continually reminding us that death can strike us down too and we would never even see it coming.
How about I tell you that there exists an ambulance which is the exact opposite of this?
A New Ambulance
Well, there is! Ambulance Wish Foundation, an organization in the Netherlands, gives terminally ill patients a last trip to do whatever they want to do before they pass away.
What’s more, thanks to that happiness, people often get calmer and much more fearless, according to the founder Kees Veldboer.
The trip, which varies from a few hours to a complete day, has all its medical practitioners on alert.
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People Are Willing To Help
The organization boasts of a whopping volunteer army of 270 people, which includes nurses, drivers, doctors, etc. and has a fleet of six ambulances granting last wishes all over Europe.
How It Works?
The ambulances are specially equipped to help patients. Their families go and have one last day of fun, spending it in a carefree manner. The trip can comprise anything, with instances being visiting an old house, a relative, a friend, going to a wedding party, a funeral or even attending a match of your favorite soccer teams.
Adapted with fully blinded windows, the ambulances let the inmates enjoy the view and have extremely comfortable stretchers where they can sit up and relax.
Origins
The origin story of this very noble venture is interesting too. Kees, as a taxi driver, was not happy with his job. But his owner started something new: taxicabs for people on wheelchairs.
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When he had initially conceived the idea, he drove a truck and not an ambulance. The Dutch government wanted medical certification for an ambulance driver. Now, because the poor man had mouths to feed at home, he couldn’t leave it all to study medicine. Instead, he drove a truck for three years before the guideline changed to requiring only a first-aid certificate. He got the required certification within three days and started driving an ambulance.
One day, his boss got him and his team to shift a patient from one hospital to the other. Since they weren’t in a hurry, they asked the patient if they wanted to go somewhere before the hospital. As it turned out, the man was a terminally ill sailor who really wanted to see the harbor before he died. And the guys in the ambulance managed to do it and on top of that, with a couple of calls, they managed to get him on to a boat too.
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Seeing the man so unbelievably happy made Kees happier and within six months, the Ambulance Wish Foundation was a concrete reality.
Can you boast of doing something that made someone so utterly happy?
Credit: Stichting Ambulance Wens Nederland| Website
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