The dreaded call came at midnight: “If there is a medical doctor on flight can they please identify themselves to a flight attendant?”
I’ve always managed to avoid these midflight calls for medical help. There was that one time when I was booked under “Dr” instead of “Ms” (my current practice) when they woke me up for someone who had ear pain and I told them to wake up Simon as a family doctor would be much more useful in that situation. I felt a might guilty about that but I think it was the right thing to do. I think he enjoyed it actually, he got to spend some time up in the cockpit for some reason. He asked if he could eat the pilot’s sandwiches and they said no.
I lay there wondering whether I should just roll over and go back to sleep and pretend I hadn’t heard. But after a couple of minutes I felt guilty and got up and presented myself for duty.
I was hoping that by now there’d be enough volunteers and I wouldn’t be needed, but no such luck. There was a nurse practitioner who’d got there ahead of me but they thought I’d be useful too. The patient was all the way down the back of the plane so I had to walk past all the other passengers to get there.
The poor passenger was an elderly German lady who had fainted in the toilet in the middle of an episode of explosive diarrhea. I was extremely pleased I’d got there once she’d been extricated from the cubicle and laid down flat. She looked pale but it was clear she was improving, awake and talking. Her pulse felt fine, the crew managed to find us some monitoring, and when these were all reassuring, we could take the oxygen mask off and encourage her to drink some electrolyte solution. The nurse was doing an excellent job with the paperwork and I was soon ready to head back up to business, my job done. We’d been liberal with the alcohol handrub, so hopefully there’d be no repercussions for us. It sounded like food poisoning was the most likely cause for her bowel issues, although there were definitely language issues interfering with our history taking.
I slept in, not bothering with breakfast, but over my coffee I was asked by the head of the cabin crew to fill out some paperwork to do with the assistance I’d provided. It’s a new initiative, basically to assure medical professionals that they wouldn’t be held liable for any repercussions from decisions made. I’m told they will be in touch, so that will be interesting. Potentially they may show their appreciation in some way but it’s hard to know what that would involve. People I know who have helped out with medical emergencies in the past say the airlines are fairly stingy, rewards usually being in the order of a bottle of champagne or similar. We shall see.
Fairly painless customs and immigration in Auckland, and then it was on to Wellington, into the bosom of my family, plus the dogs. It was too long away really, I don’t think I’ll do that again.