Mother-Daughter Nurse Duo Save Man’s Life on Cross-Country Flight

Mother-Daughter Nurse Duo Save Man’s Life on Cross-Country Flight

If you fly often, you may have experienced the flight crew call for medical personnel to assist with a sick passenger.  The call itself can be terrifying to hear, regardless of how minor the medical emergency may seem.

Well earlier this month, a mother-daughter duo save a man’s life on a Delta flight to Salt Lake City responded to one such call, and they ended up saving the man’s life, who was unresponsive, hunched over in his seat with vomit in his mouth.

According to the the Citizen Times:

The man’s blood pressure registered 56/30, or as Morgan puts it, “the brink of death.” Ideally, his blood pressure would be around 120/60. He was in hypovolemic shock, likely due to extreme dehydration, Rose determined, and he needed fluid.

“His blood pressure was too low,” Rose told the Citizen Times. “If somebody hadn’t done something to correct that, he probably would’ve gone into cardiac arrest and died.”

Morgan gave her mom the needle and catheter from the medical kit and helped her hook the man to an IV to begin rehydrating him thereby raising his blood pressure. It would typically take two to three liters of saline in order to properly care for the man, Rose and Morgan said, but they had to make do with the materials available.

“It was like walking a tight rope, keeping him all right with what we had,” Rose said.

As the mother and daughter duo worked to save their patient, they relayed his vital information to a physician on the ground. Many commercial airlines rely on ground-based medical consulting hubs, where physicians can walk plane staff through in-air medical emergencies. These physicians ultimately decide whether to reroute planes for emergency landings. In this case, the physician, based out of Pittsburgh, decided that the ill man was in stable enough condition to avoid a costly diversion.

After several minutes on the IV, the man regained consciousness and was able to speak and drink water on his own. He told Rose and Morgan, who continued to care for him until the plane landed, that he was on his way to visit his mother. The man was in stable condition when paramedics took over after they landed.

The mother-daughter duo received a written thank you from the pilot for their service.  This story could have definitely had a different ending if it weren’t for the skills and quick reaction of these two nurses!  An incredibly happy ending to this terrifying story.