Medical emergency on a plane
What did I do?
Firstly, I know I’ve been AWOL. It’s been a busy few weeks, a lot of obstacles to face and overcome and I just never got around to writing any newsletters.
I will try to continue the weekly pace from now but cannot promise missing a week here and there as it is getting to that time of the year where I have to start job applications and exams are getting closer and closer.
Medical emergency on my flight
It was just another regular day. I had a flight to catch from Cyprus to the UK. Done the trip many many times.
Yesterday, I was on seat 16A, an elderly straight couple, probably between 65 and 75 were seated in seats 16B and C, with the husband in B.
4 hours into the flight, while I am just watching Netflix on my iPad and the man next to me asleep. He starts to seize. Well, it looked like a seizure to me. A tonic-clonic one to be specific. I thought maybe this is a normal occurrence for him, but his wife looked towards me and said
“can you help me I don’t know what’s wrong with him?”
and at this point I thought, damn, alright, here we go.
Asked her what his name was and she said:
“John” (name changed for obvious reasons).
I proceeded to call out for his name and nudge him a little.
“John?, John?, Can you hear me? are you okay?”
and he opens his eyes, stops the jerky movements and replies with
“Yes, yes, I just feel a little dizzy and that I am about to faint”.
My thought process here was to just carry out the A to E assessment to the best of my ability with whatever I can do. Funnily enough, the main reason I am on this flight is to go do my ILS (Immediate Life Support) course which focuses on the A to E assessment lol. Luckily, I have done alot of extra curricular A to E stuff and I was somewhat confident in it. Firstly, i thought I’d get the most obvious things out the way so I asked him if he’s a diabetic (maybe he is hypoglycaemia) or if he takes any medications (Specifically I had BP meds and benzos in mind, BP meds could’ve caused hypotension and the benzos could have just caused reduced consciousness/dizziness etc) - he answers with
“no, I don’t take any medication at all”
I thought ah shit, there go some of the obvious causes.
Anyways, moving on to the A to E. So he just spoke to me, I’m happy with A. For B, he wasn’t tachypneic and that’s all I could really think of checking at that moment. For C I just checked his pulse and it was normal. At this point the air hostess had come and can I just say, I was fully impressed by the staff on that flight. The training hostesses get is surely amazing. She was asking all the right questions and all the things I would’ve asked and I was impressed. She then brought him some sugary snacks and cooled the temperature of the cabin as it was quit warm.
My concerns? I just saw him have a seizure. He had no recollection of it. I did not want to just tell him you had a seizure and scare him. I asked when was the last time he went and got checked up by his GP and he said it’s been forever. So I suggested he goes to see his GP as soon as he can to get checked.
My conclusion
I have a high suspicion that he is diabetic and he had such a severe low glucose level that caused a seizure. In RARE cases, non-diabetics can also get severe hypoglycaemia, but again, it’s rare and it’s better for him to rule out diabetes first.
I am hoping “John” goes to see his GP and mentions this dizziness episode and hopefully the GP asks for a Hba1c test for him to see his glucose levels. (Hba1c blood test tells us the average glucose levels in your blood for the last 3 months).
I was considering contacting the airline to get John’s details to call him and let him know exactly what I saw so he can report that back to his GP, but I don’t know where the line is with stepping over boundaries. I will think about it for a bit and see what to do.