Taking off from JFK Airport last Thursday, I snapped this photo. Getting set up on GoGo wireless, I could not have imagined what would transpire in just a few hours.
Here is the play-by-play.
We were about 2 hours and 30 minutes into the flight from NYC
to SAN when the announcement comes that shakes everyone on the flight to the
core. “Is there a doctor on board? Please, if anyone is a doctor on board,
please identify yourself and come help us in first class.” It was a strong request for help.
I sat up in my seat and looked back to see if there was a
doctor on board, and unfortunately, the people on the plane seemed frozen-
there was no doctor.
Jumping out of my seat, I ran to first class, and could
immediately see an elderly lady on the ground, who had lost all her color. She
was staring lifeless and breathless at the ceiling of the airplane. The flight
attendant was starting chest compressions and he was concurrently trying to see
if she was breathing, which she was not. I corrected her head position and
started mouth to mouth pushing air into her lungs, as the focused flight
attendant Ryan Moore kept yelling, “Bring me the AED, bring me the AED!” to the
other flight attendants. Ryan was the most professional, well-trained
airline personnel I have ever interacted with. Delta should be proud.
When the AED arrived, he
started to open the kit, and get it ready. He moved with lightning speed to set
up the equipment and in seconds she had the electric leads and pads on her
chest. As he worked with the equipment, I took over the chest compressions -
short bursts, just like the CPR safety video I watched just months before on
YouTube.
A pediatric nurse joined our impromptu rescue crew, and as I
continued the compressions, she took over mouth-to-mouth breaths to fill the
lungs, along with checking for a pulse periodically. “I’m not getting a pulse,
I’m not getting a pulse!” she said. The AED machine then advised a shock, which indicated that her heart likely had stopped. We cleared the patient and the first shock was issued.
As we continued CPR, the entire plane held its breath,
praying that she would start breathing again.
The woman was still unconscious and with no pulse-- time
was moving at a snail’s pace. After the flight attendant put the sticky
paddles on the woman’s chest, he yelled “Clear!” to keep the patient from
shocking anyone else, and with a beep, the device delivered the first
shock. She seemed to move around a bit, but the shock did not seem to
restart the heart - so we kept doing CPR, then delivered a second shock.
And it is here when her rescue breathing started, short
breaths as she was gasping for air. The O2 arrived and the nurse and I changed
positions and I grabbed the back of her neck and started to talk to her while
holding the O2 mask on her face.
I asked her daughter about her age, history, medications,
and found out that she had recently been cardioverted from Atrial Fibrillation,
which is when the heart goes into an abnormal beat and is then shocked back
into a normal beat. It is dangerous in much older folks, because of the risk of
stroke, though this did not look like a stroke, this looked more like a heart
attack caused by blockage hitting her heart, or the heart going into ventricular tachycardia, but blood clots can occur on flights, perhaps triggered because she was flying
with a broken leg.
Her blood pressure was coming back from the readings the
nurse was now taking, and her pulse was a locked in 120.
She had been without vitals for about 4-5 min as we
performed CPR.
As she started slowly to regain consciousness, I asked
her daughter her name, and she indicated that she was called “Nana”, so I started to talk to her,
“Nana, my name is Mitch, it’s going to be okay. We’re all here and there is a lot
of noise, but listen to my voice, your daughter is here as well. You’re doing
fine.” Her eyes were beginning to open and close.
With the application of the O2 mask, she started to feel
more and more alert, but still was laying down with only her eyes moving.
“Nana, can you hear me?” I asked, and she nodded slowly. “She’s
responsive!” I said. And the nurse and I exchanged a quick glance of relief.
I kept my left hand around her head and neck and held her
head and kept talking to her, explaining to her what was going on. Her sweet
blue, fearful eyes looked up at me and I looked down to her, and told her it
was all okay, and that she was going to be fine over and over again for the hour.
I could see the fear slowly dissipate from her glances and she started to relax
as she and I communicated with the tornado spinning around us. I kept
talking to her.
Whenever you are going through something of this
magnitude, just having someone who cares next to you means the world. One
of the lonely things about dying is that we leave everyone behind as we go to
see what’s next.
The pilot had diverted the flight to St. Louis and we
were descending quickly and heading to the closest airport, you could feel the
plane dropping like it was an amusement park ride. I told Nana we were
going to land and that she would be okay.
When I mentioned to her that she was going to the
hospital, she also said the sweetest thing. She asked with a mumble through the
O2 mask, “Oh dear, how long will I have to stay in the hospital? Will I miss
the rest of this flight to San Diego?” The spark of life in her blue eyes
was growing stronger and stronger. In that moment, it was easy to see a beautiful child, trapped in an aging body, and afraid of inconveniencing her daughter.
I told her “Nana, you’re going to have quite a story to
tell, I’ll bet you’ve never landed on a flight while lying down.” She smiled at
me through the O2 mask.
Ryan, the flight attendant who performed the two shocks kept
taking her blood pressure, and monitoring the AED, while now helping the nurse
get an IV line in to her arm, just in case.
Flight attendant Ryan Moore was calm, professional and followed the exact protocol required to save a life.
It was amazing to watch the flight attendants, including Ryan switch from serving
customers in a caring way to a rapid response medical team, gathering and deploying the
necessary equipment and process to save Nana.
Nana looked up at me frequently now. I had become
her friend. She would close her eyes every short bit, and then re-open
them to make sure I was still there, just inches away - as if to check in on
me, even though she could feel my hands around her neck, damp from
perspiration.
The compassion of the entire plane seemed to be in my
hands as I was holding her head with one hand and the O2 mask placed gently on
her face with my other.
As we descended, I stayed with her, holding her in the
aisle. When everyone sat back down in their seats, Ryan sat in the chair next
to her watching the AED, which was monitoring her heartbeat.
As we approached touchdown, I stayed with her so she
would not be scared using my legs to brace myself for landing by propping them
against the aisle chairs on either side of the plane. The flight
attendant counted down, 10, 9, 8, 7, then we landed softly when he said 1.
The pilot had performed a perfect smooth landing, and our
patchwork medical crew had brought Nana back to life. Her daughter who
was traveling with her was speechless and holding back tears.
We taxied to the gate and the ENTs arrived quickly. We
briefed them on the situation and helped Nana sit up slowly, and I passed her
off into the arms of an ENT from St. Louis.
I did not realize until I stood up after being
pretzel-cramped on the floor with Nana leaning on me for close to an hour, that
my legs had gone numb and were now trembling. But I could feel my soul beaming
with the amazing visual I will now have in my mind forever of Nana coming to
life as I held her head, after we all took turns performing CPR.
Before she left the cradle of my arms and hands, I had
said, “Nana are you okay, are you uncomfortable?” and I gently pushed her hair
from her face. She replied to me with a bit of a smile and raise of her two
bushy grey eyebrows, “Well, I’m most certainly uncomfortable, but I’ll be okay,”
and she smiled again behind the O2.
I smiled back at her and she and I were connected - in
the way that only two total strangers, born decades apart, who have shared the
moments of CPR, the moments of re-entry into life at 30,000 feet.
Though I may never see her again, I will most certainly
never forget her.
Nana from Delta flight 2303 will always
carry a special place in my heart.
What a flight.
-Mitch
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Everyone should watch the latest CPR videos on YouTube and get certified from the American Red Cross
If you can get a defibrillator at your office and or home, it is an amazing, life saving device - please get one if you can. Philips makes a easy-to-use home or work edition, click here for more info.
Breathing deeply in training forces
our bodies into a pattern of relaxation and it makes us wherever we are — kids
on a playground. Psychologists have said that when people play they gain
control over their world, and by manipulating their activities they can control
the outcome of events.
