MONTREAL -- A 75-year-old Longueuil woman recently waited 10 hours to see a doctor after falling and hitting her head.

A few weeks ago, Barbara Currie Markous spent the night on her living room floor. She spent nine hours laying, crawling and unable to get up after she fell.

She made it to the door of her home and called for help. A neighbour came running and called an ambulance.

Markous' face would later bruise from the force of her fall, turning a deep shade of purple and black around her eyes.

Paramedics rushed her to the hospital, but her ordeal was not over.

She spent another 10 hours on a stretcher in a hallway.

"I can't believe that, I can't believe that," her neighbour, Marie-Josee Soucy, said. "Because she has diabetes, she has a pacemaker, and she takes medication for her blood."

Markous said she hadn't eaten or drank anything during the wait, so Soucy brought her some food. Eventually, Markous saw a doctor, but she wondered why it took so long.

"What got me is that it was a head injury," she said. "Even if its the front of the head it's still a head injury and they didn't take an x-ray until 11 o'clock at night. Now, if I had something wrong, I would have been in deep trouble.

The regional health authority told CTV News in a statement that the situation was unfortunate and raised concerns and said they would investigate the incident.

But the response isn't sufficient, Markous said.

"They probably don't even know the circumstances because no one was looking at me or paying any attention to me, so no one even knows I was there. So how could they find out what happened?" she asked.

The CAQ government has promised to reduce emergency room wait times.

But Markous isn't taking chances. She now wears a panic button device on her at all times.