Medical Emergency at 37,000 Feet
I’m currently sitting in the Cincinnati airport (CVG), having just got off the redeye from Seattle on my way to Pittsburgh. First off, I’m highly disappointed that there are no Skyline Chili installations here. I was hoping to grab a little for an early breakfast snack. Alas, I’m stuck with my caramel apple cider from Starbucks.
Secondly, I’m le tired. Usually I sleep pretty well on planes, and my flight here was relatively smooth, so I took a nice nap about an hour and a half into it (the first half-hour was dedicated to playing with Delta’s in-seat video screen, a first for me, and the next hour to watching an Episode of Heroes on my Zune – I’m desperately trying to finish Season 1 so I can start watching Season 2 this fall.) I woke up to the following announcement, which I never thought I’d actually hear on a plane, having relegated this situation to the “only seen in movies” category:
Ladies and Gentlemen, sorry to wake you, but if there are any medical personnel on board, any nurses or EMT’s, please ring your call button. We are in need of your assistance.
I had been sleeping for a while, so groggily peeked out of my airline blanket to see a lady in front of my ring her call button. Shortly thereafter, she was ushered back to the row behind me. Apparently, a man sitting back there had collapsed/passed out and become unresponsive. I think I heard something about the person being diabetic, and figured they had it under control. Then I heard an AED. After all the training I’ve had on those, it’s pretty easy to recognize the “Apply pads to dry, bare chest. Plug in connector” announcement these devices make when turned on. I looked back to see an O2 tank out and a large crowd of people around the patient. Luckily, he ended up walking off the plane. I’ll write more later, but I’m now being called for my next flight. I’m off to PITT!!!
UPDATE (10/8/2007, 8:30PM): I’m back on a plane, headed home to Seattle. I’ll post this when I get back home. I wanted to follow up on one thing in the above post. I’m very glad the person who was having the medical issue made it out of the situation OK. I was, however, quite surprised that we didn’t end up landing earlier. When the problem happened, we had just entered Illinois, at least according to Delta’s new in-seat video screens that show a GPS map of the plane’s location. We continued straight to Cincinnati, passing up opportunities to divert to Chicago, Champaign, and Indianapolis. I assume there are other airports along the way that were capable of having a 757 land, but I don’t know them off the top of my head. It seems to me that if you’re breaking out the AED and calling for Aspirin over the PA, you at least suspect a heart attack and should get the person into medical care as soon as possible. Perhaps the situation wasn’t as bad as it sounded, and the AED was unnecessary. And I realize that an emergency medical landing is very costly to the airline because of all the other passengers that you now have to re-route, potentially out of an airport that the airline doesn’t normally operate from. But, if I were having a heart attack on a plane, I hope they’d land as soon as possible and get me to a hospital! I’m going to have to research what airline policy is for such a situation. Luckily, everything worked out just fine, and we all landed safely and got to our destinations. I did have a great weekend in the Burgh – more on that in a later post!
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