Help at the Press of a Button: Medical Alert Device Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe living with a medical alert device, from pull cords and pendants to fall-detecting smartwatches. What brought people to them varies: six hours on a kitchen floor in Leeds, bypass surgery, a hip replacement, epilepsy, Parkinson's freezing, multiple sclerosis, POTS at twenty-nine, early Alzheimer's, night-time lows with type 1 diabetes, black ice in Duluth. The writers include a farmer of eighty-eight who still milks by hand, a long-haul trucker, a house cleaner from Michoacán working alone in Los Angeles, a paraplegic software tester whose chair confused automatic detection, a hiker of eighty on Colorado trails and a volunteer who fits pendants for people who cannot afford them. Adult children write too, managing a father in Pune from London or a mother who pressed the button forty times in one month. Places run from a Wheatbelt sheep farm to a Berlin flat with a key safe. The practical side gets plenty of room: false alarms, monthly fees and small print, health-plan paperwork, flat batteries, a doorstep salesman, a scam phone call, an operator who spoke no French. Not every story ends well: one man left his pendant on the dresser and broke his wrist, one cheap alarm only made a noise, and one man simply stopped needing his.

Who it's for

For older people deciding whether to wear an alarm, the adult children and partners who worry about them, and anyone living alone with a condition that brings sudden falls.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 232 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.