An Ottawa man is sharing his wife’s painful experience after she waited almost three hours for an ambulance to arrive after breaking her legs. On Dec. 21, 2025, 75-year-old Sandy Cratzbarg tripped at a friend’s house. “We were at a good friend’s house and on our way to go back home, she tripped over boots,” recalls Sid Cratzbarg, Sandy’s husband. Later, Sandy, who has osteoarthritis, would learn she had broken her femur in one leg and her tibia in the other. “We’ve been married 49 years, and I’ve never heard someone screaming in pain like that,” Cratzbarg told CTV News. “She even said it was worse than giving birth.” The couple’s friends called 9-1-1 while Sandy laid on the floor and were instructed by paramedics to not give Sandy any pain medication or liquids. They ended up waiting two hours for an ambulance to arrive. “Finally, the ambulance did arrive, and we look out the window and then it turns around, and it went,” he said. Ottawa Paramedic Chief Pierre Poirier tells CTV News that a life-threatening call had come in, redirecting the ambulance elsewhere. “In this case, three paramedic crews were assigned to the call and two were redirected to life-threatening calls before the third paramedic crew arrived at the patient’s side,” Poirier said in a statement. “I just thought, what the hell’s going on? This is ridiculous,” said Cratzbarg. “She’s on the floor screaming. She’s in excruciating pain. Still was almost another hour for another ambulance.” Poirier said that paramedics responded to more than 50 life-threatening calls between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Dec. 21, 2025, and as a result, some non-life-threatening calls had to wait longer for service. “I understand,” said Cratzbarg, “but it’s so hard to justify the wait time.” Poirier added that events that day were uncommon and do not reflect the overall performance or responsiveness of the service. Sandy Cratzbarg is currently recovering at the Kemptville Hospital, but her husband says she has a long recovery road of 12 to 18 months due to the double leg break. “I don’t want to see anybody lying on the floor screaming in pain for three hours, waiting for an ambulance,” he said. At the end of the day, it’s an experience that has left Cratzbarg frustrated with Canada’s health care system. “I’m reading the paper every day. There are major problems with emergency rooms, primary care, ambulatory services, and I think our government is doing a terrible job, a horrible job as far as a national policy for health care.”
