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Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Medical Emergency at 35,000 feet



Yesterday I had one of the more frightening experiences I've had in a while. I was working lead on the final day of a three day trip coming from Houston to Detroit. I was up doing my pre-meal beverage service when a lady in the back of the cabin began waving at me frantically. Before I could get to the back of the plane, one of the other flight attendants saw the woman as well and responded. He found her husband unresponsive in his seat.
The gentleman resumed consciousness but was incoherent and unable to communicate. The third flight attendant paged for a doctor while I informed the flight deck. Fortunately we had a doctor on board and our training kicked in. Every year in annual recurrent training we hear about incidents and how suddenly all your training comes right back to you. I had always wondered how true that was, but found it to be very true. While a passenger and I moved the gentleman to the floor the other f/a's were busy bringing the phalanx of emergency equipment to the scene.
All passenger aircraft carry defibrillators, oxygen, heart monitors and a stash of medicines designed for use by medical professionals. Suddenly all of this equipment was there and ready for use, I was truly impressed at how quickly my coworkers responded!
The doctor on board asked that we get the plane on the ground quickly and the Captain got us down in a hurry. We landed at Little Rock and taxi-ed right up to the gate where paramedics met the flight. The gentleman and his wife were removed and taken to a local hospital. No word on his condition or what triggered his event but I'm sure he is in good hands.
Once the appropriate paperwork was completed (which surely was designed by a consortium of carbon paper producers) we taxi-ed back out and took off for Detroit where I was met with yet another mountain of paperwork. All in all though, I think I'd prefer filling out the paperwork instead of causing it.

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