Patty Quinlan, a Lehigh Valley Health Network physician, came to the aid of a man on her Thanksgiving Day flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco.
While you were watching the Detroit Lions turn the Eagles into green bean casserole on Thanksgiving Day, Patricia Quinlan was coming to the rescue of a very sick man at 35,000 feet.
The Lehigh Valley Hospital Network physician was on United Airlines Flight 653 from Philadelphia to San Francisco when the passenger across the aisle from her lost consciousness and fell out of his seat.
"I thought 'Hopefully, he just fell asleep,'" Quinlan recounted with a laugh in a phone interview from Seattle, where she and her family are visiting friends.
But no — the man was in bad shape, with a thready pulse and dangerously low blood pressure.
Quinlan, of Center Valley, went to work. The plane, a 727, had an automated external defibrillator — an electronic device used to shock stopped hearts back into rhythm.
She hooked it to the man's chest and discovered he had a normal heart rhythm, meaning he wasn't suffering a blockage.
"The pilot asked if we needed to make an emergency landing in Chicago," Quinlan said. "If I hadn't had [the defibrillator], I would have said yes."
With the help of a pediatric intensive care unit nurse and an emergency medical technician who also happened to be on the flight, Quinlan began administering intravenous fluid.
Slowly but surely, the 59-year-old man — who was heading to China via San Francisco — came around.
"He was out for a good 20 minutes," Quinlan said. "It took us about 90 minutes to get him upright. We'd lift him a little and he'd pass out again."
The story was more complicated than it sounds. The man was alone, so there was no way to determine his medical history. The plane was also packed — Quinlan and the others had to maneuver in the narrow aisle with no room to spare.
The passengers pitched in. Some used their smartphones to shine light on the patient; one man offered his belt as a tourniquet for the IV, but it was too big, so Quinlan ended up using her hair tie.
No one could find alcohol to disinfect the IV needle. A flight attendant doused it with whiskey from the bar cart.
"And the IV bag had a little leak in it, so a woman found masking tape in her pocketbook and we taped it up," Quinlan said.
It was all quite MacGyver-like. By the time the plane landed, the man was alert and able to walk off the plane.
He was very grateful, Quinlan said.
"I think he was just probably very, very dehydrated," she added. "And he had taken blood pressure medicine that morning."
The flight crew gave Quinlan a thank-you note for "going above and beyond" and the pilot carried her luggage off the plane.
They also gave her a nickname, one that will undoubtedly follow her around for the rest of her career once her colleagues get hold of it:
"Doctor Angel."
Source: http://www.mcall.com
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