Mariel Williams
editor@mitchellnews.com
Mitchell Medics recently honored four staff members for fighting through storm damage to reach a medical emergency the day massive flooding and infrastructure outages hit the area in September.
Emergency room physician Dr. Gabriel Cade spoke about the significance of paramedics and emergency medical technicians in the process of responding to the onset of sudden illness.
“I’m grateful for even just 15 minutes to recognize you guys,” Cade said. “Because you are amazing, but also because this job deserves recognition, and what we do deserves more recognition than we get.”
Cade encouraged the first responders to remember that their work is important to patients even when those patients have no chance to give thanks.
“I want you to remember that what you do matters a lot to people and to me, what you do matters to me and the work that I do and matters to the hospital.”
Unexpected crisis
Jennifer Hopper said her son Devon Hughes’ emergency the morning of the storm was completely unexpected, not related to any previous diagnosis.
“Friday morning, we had got up and everybody was in the living room — thank God I was off work,” Hopper said. “Devon had been around to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. And I was like ‘Hey babe, shut the refrigerator door — there’s no power.’ Well, he didn’t do anything.”
Hopper went into the kitchen to check on the open fridge door.
“I get up and walk around to him, and he is like stuck, beside the refrigerator, having a grand mal seizure,” she said. “I was a paramedic before; I’m a nurse now ... I laid him on his side like protocol .. tried to keep his airway clear, and then kind of talk him through breathing, and he would come out of it but he would go right back into a seizure.”
The morning of Sept. 27, Mitchell County abruptly lost all phone service, both landlines and cellphones. Hopper was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher when she was cut off.
“I wasn’t sure if they’d gotten my address or anything,” she said with a slight catch in her throat. “I didn’t know if anybody was coming or not.”
After 45 minutes of seizures, Hopper became desperate to get Devon to the hospital, so she started running around to neighbors’ houses, asking for chainsaws and help clearing the roads.
“Because I knew that he can’t sustain this. And I get to the last neighbor’s house, and Alex comes through the woods — he had drove his own vehicle and cut a way in.”
EMT Supervisor Alex Brown said he remembered getting the call to go to Hopper’s house at around 8:15 a.m. while he was driving his personal vehicle around Spruce Pine.
“I was in a Ford F-150 — I was able to kind of dodge trees so to speak to get there,” Brown said.
Brown was able to keep Devon alive until an ambulance came, escorted by firefighters cutting a way through the debris with chainsaws.
Devon has never had seizures before.
“He seized almost two and a half hours before we got everything under control under the hospital,” Hopper said.
Devon himself has only minimal memories of that day.
“All I remember is … trying to make a sandwich,” Devon said. “I don’t remember falling or nothing—I just remember leaning up against the counter … and right before [she] lowered me to the ground I guess I must have passed out.”