Playing the part of Good Samaritan

I seem to have a knack for finding crazy situations. Yesterday I flew out of Newark airport at 7am. I had only gotten a mere restless 4 hours of sleep the night before. I was looking forward to getting on the plane and falling asleep. Within a few minutes I was out like a light only to be awaken a short time later by the stewardesses announcing they were bringing breakfast around and the prices of all the menu items. As I was waiting for them to come I notice the stewardesses were running around and seemed like something was up. When I stood to see what they were doing I could see they were focused on one guy. I decided to go up and see if they needed any help and as soon as I said I am an EMT and nursing student they said “here please take over, we will get you whatever you need.”

The man was vomiting and did not look good. When I looked at his pupils I realized he was not in good shape. He kept going in and out of consciousness and was not arousing to verbal stimulus. At that point I took his Blood pressure and saw that he was 70/30 and barely could find a pulse. I laid him down in the shock position.

At this point the stewardess said “They want to know if you want him to divert the plane? What do you think?” What do I think??? Well, I just assumed they would divert the plane and did not expect them to rely on my “expertise”. Haha, did they here nursing student? I think they missed that part. Initially we decided to divert but with being laid down, and some other things his BP went up. At that point I offered to monitor the guy for the remaining 4 hours and as long as he stayed stable we could continue on. They guy was 82 and he kept saying it must have been that bagel I ate this morning. Sorry my friend I don’t think a bagel would cause your blood pressure and pulse to do that. As I talked to him more, I realized he takes a beta blocker medicine for his Glaucoma (pressure in the eye increases causing damage to the vision). A beta blocker is most often used for the heart and it drops the blood pressure and pulse. It turns out he was not using it properly, in order to prevent the eye drops from going into the blood stream by putting pressure on your inner corner of your eye for 2 min. This is a common side effect. I can’t say this is what was causing it but it made sense.

Once things had calmed and it seemed the man was going to be stable for the remainder of the flight, the stewardesses were giving me free food, asking me if I needed anything. I felt like I was in first class. At one point a stewardess mentioned that I would probably get a free ticket from Delta, or at the minimum she was going to send me a buddy pass. I told them it is what I do and that they don’t have to do anything. At that point she said, you just saved Delta a lot of money and hassle as we would have had to find ways to get all of the people on this flight another way to get to their destinations. I never thought of that.

Well, my second leg out of Salt Lake City was much less dramatic, and I am now in Portland. I came down to Albany and had Red Robyn with my best friend Robyn from college. Now I am sitting on the couch with her daughter cuddled up to me. Oh can I stay here forever. This is one of the things I miss most about being in NJ. I miss coming and hanging out with my good friends Rob and Robyn and their fun kids. We are on a mission to find a way to get Robyn to NJ. Soon it will happen but not soon enough ☺