When a 59-year-old man fell seriously ill during a flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco, the entire cabin seemingly came together to help a Pennsylvania physician treat him.
United Airlines Flight 653 was still on the eastern side of the United States when Dr. Patricia Quinlan watched the man across the aisle from her slump over and fall out of his seat. Her first thought was that he was just sleeping, but she checked on him anyway, and discovered that both his pulse and his blood pressure were dangerously low. She grabbed the plane’s automated external defibrillator — a portable medical device that is mandatory on all commercial flights in the U.S. — and determined that he did not have any kind of blockage in his coronary arteries. Quinlan told The Morning Call:
“The pilot asked if we needed to make an emergency landing in Chicago. If I hadn’t had [the defibrillator], I would have said yes.”
Quinlan was then joined by two other medical professionals who happened to be on the flight — a pediatric intensive care nurse and an EMT — who began giving him fluids through an IV (which was also part of the plane’s emergency medical kit). Then the other passengers on the full Thanksgiving day flight began doing what they could to help out.
Some used the flashlights on their phones to illuminate the passenger-turned-patient. One man gave up his belt to be used as a tourniquet for the IV (although Quinlan ended up using her own hair tie), while a woman found masking tape in her purse, which was used to patch up a small hole in the IV bag. And when no alcohol could be found to sterilize the IV needle, a quick-thinking flight attendant grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the beverage cart.
After almost 90 minutes of treatment, the unidentified 59-year-old man regained consciousness and was back in his seat. Quinlan said:
“I think he was just probably very, very dehydrated. And he had taken blood pressure medicine that morning.”
When the flight landed in San Francisco, Quinlan was given a thank you note from the flight crew and the pilot personally carried her bags off the plane. She was also given the nickname “Doctor Angel” (although we would’ve gone with Dr. Quinlan, Medicine Woman). Road Warrior Voices has reached out to United Airlines for additional comment.