Piha cancer patient picks up fish and chips order on way to hospital

St John ambulance staff were treated to a warm dinner of fish and chips from the Piha RSA while they were transporting a local resident to hospital.

Bobbie Carroll, who is battling cancer, needed to be taken to hospital by ambulance after she had complications as a result of her medication on Wednesday evening.

Her partner dialled 111 who dispatched the local first response to the scene to help out until an ambulance arrived.

She told the Herald she felt very hungry and, after being stabilised for travel by St John medics, an order was put out to the local RSA kitchen.

"After they arrived and they were preparing to take me to hospital I was so hungry, I was starving," Carroll said.

"We called [RSA chef] Fiona and she said they had had the busiest night ever, that they'd practically run out and they had closed.

"I said 'damn thing, I'm about to go to hospital. Please darling, is there any chance?' and she said 'I don't think so but I'll ring them' so I said 'let me know' but she didn't call back," Carroll said.

As they headed out of Piha they passed the RSA and she asked the crew to pull over and for someone to check to see if anything had been prepared for them.

"I said to the guys to pull over and pop into the RSA kitchen and see if they were able to do some fish and chips for us.

"Well bugger me they did - there was three pieces of fish, chips and a quarter lemon already packed up for us," she said.

RSA chef Fiona Anderson said she was more than happy to help out.

"We'd just closed but she's in a battle for her life and if she needs fish and chips before she goes to the hospital, fish and chips she shall have," she said.

As a first response member, Anderson was not only happy to help out a friend, but help out the ambulance crew themselves.

"I have great respect for them, anything that I can do to make an ambulance officer's life easier I'm just all over that," she said.

One crew member told Carroll that in his 10 years of ambulance driving, he had never had someone buy him dinner.

"The ambulance guys were blown out, it was just fabulous," Carroll said.