LIFE AND DEATH AT 30,000 FEET

LIFE AND DEATH AT 30,000 FEET

Right talent, right place, right time

As I settled into the aisle seat, a somewhat disheveled young man in the window seat across the aisle seemed to lean against the window for support. There was something odd about him… but hey, whatever; my life was good.

I had just completed a CHRO pitch in Vancouver WA, and was heading to LA where I would meet up with Connie, who was visiting with the grandkids in Santa Monica. From there we would drive down to Laguna Beach where I would pack a fresh suitcase and head back to the airport for a Sunday trip to Delaware for a HumanCAPITAL Platform orals presentation.

And then, the holidays!

Old-school gangster rap was booming through my headphones (a vice picked up from my eldest daughter during her rebellious years) when the passenger across the aisle pressed his call button. While I could not hear what he asked the flight attendant, it seemed like he wanted her to fill up his water bottle. I got a side glimpse at his eyes and decided that he was probably high. “Not cool”, I remember thinking.

I must have fallen asleep. A commotion across the aisle roused me. The two passengers in the middle and aisle seats, were frantically pushing their call buttons. The young man I had noticed previously, the one next to the window, was experiencing some sort of tremors.

The flight attendant got one look at him, the seizures were increasingly violent now, and ran up to the front of the plane to page for an on-flight physician.

The doctor, In her mid-thirties, dressed in a hoodie and sweatpants, appeared from nowhere and instantly took command. She literally yanked the two passengers next to the patient out of their seats and told the flight attendant to get the medical kit. Then she laid the young man down across the three seats, holding him down as she was able, and asked about his condition.

Not getting a response, she looked up at me. “Give me your phone.” (Wait. What?) She turned on the phone’s flashlight and looked into his eyes. I could tell she was perplexed.

“He is blind”, the returning flight attendant said, struggling to open the medical kit.

“Ok, that’s nice to know” said the doctor.

The flight attendant, very nervous, must have unclasped the wrong latch because the medical kit suddenly burst open and several small bottles rolled out onto the floor. The doctor took the kit from her, set it down on my opened tray table, and began to rummage through the contents.

(I tried not to register my concern, but in the commotion my phone had disappeared.)

The patient’s seizures increased in intensity, making his body move and jerk out of control. The two flight attendants now holding him down, were now having a more difficult time. “Look for something labeled ‘carbamazepine’ or it might be called ‘Tegretol’ she said to me as she maneuvered herself back into the row to help them.

She climbed back across the seats and firmly took the young man’s head between her hands, almost shouting” Sir, do you have epilepsy? Has this happened to you before? Are you diabetic?”

And finally, through the tremors, she got a nod.
“Hypoglycemia, not epilepsy” she called out, “I need a glucagon emergency kit!”

And while we never did find what was needed in the flight’s own medical kit (“I am going to have words with this airline” the doctor said later), there was a diabetic on board who was able to provide the medication she was looking for.

Thirty minutes later, with the patient now alert, sipping on orange juice, and beginning to chat with his fellow passengers, the doctor went up to the flight deck to talk on the phone to the airline’s ground-based medical officer. (“bureaucracy, yuck” sighed the doctor when the flight attendant fetched her.)

When she returned, while walking down the aisle for a follow-up check on her patient, the cabin burst into spontaneous applause.

“Team effort”, she said modestly, nodding to the other flight attendants and also (I choose to believe) to me and the others in our row. “Happy holidays to you all, and now, let’s see how our patient is doing.”

Happy holidays indeed; a gift of life.

I suddenly saw my missing phone being passed between passengers several rows ahead. I called out and it eventually made its way back to me.

A more modest gift perhaps, but I was filled with gratitude all the same. For my returned phone as well as everything, and everyone, I so often take for granted.