Amazing True Story!

Here’s what I love: the following story is 100% true.

Bill and I have a friend named Cami.  She is an amazing person—fun, funny, beautiful, talented, smart, athletic, and kind.  If she sounds like the total package, that’s because she is!  I mean, she’s an ER doctor who recently completed the Ironman World Championship event in Kona, Hawaii.  Total Super Woman, right!? 

Well, after Cami finished the Ironman—wait!—Do you even know what this is?  It’s a 2.4-mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bicycle ride and then a marathon 26.2-mile run, raced in that order and without a break. It is widely considered one of the most difficult one-day sporting events in the world.  Most Ironman events have a strict time limit of 17 hours to complete the race.  Cami did it in UNDER 15 hours.  Not too shabby, eh?

 

So, now you know that Cami is no joke. 

Well, you are going to love hearing what happened to her on her flight back from Hawaii…

The plane had been in the air for more than two hours.  It was a nighttime flight and Cami's husband, David joined the many passengers who shut their windows to the dark waters of the Pacific below and tried to fall asleep in their cramped airplane seats.  But, not Ironwoman Cami.  She had three hours of battery left on her laptop and she needed this time in the air to finish preparing a lecture she had to give in Florida the next day.  (Yes, that’s right, they were on a flight from Hawaii, which would stop in Dallas where she would grab her connecting flight to Florida to speak at a conference.)  

Back in row 48, as David snoozes, Cami pecks away on her computer wishing she could ice her quads, which are throbbing post-Ironman.  Suddenly, the captain makes a request:  “If there is any medical professional on the plane, we could use your assistance in the first class cabin.” 

Cami stops typing.  Her eyes shift to her sleeping husband.  “Someone needs a doctor up front—should I go?”  Cami whispers to David who opens one eye and shrugs.

Cami keeps typing. 

Moments later, the captain makes the same announcement.  Cami peers up the long aisle towards the front of the plane, but can’t tell what is going on. 

Just then, the in-air movie, which had been playing on the screens, stops abruptly.  Every screen flashes the same announcement.  A doctor is needed up front. 

Cami shuts her laptop and strains to pull her tired, race-worn body out of the seat.  She begins making her way down the aisle, but people are sleeping with their legs in her way.  Her weary quads nearly refuse to lift her foot over the minor obstacles.  It is slow-going for this Ironman, but she eventually reaches the first class cabin. 

As Cami pulls back the curtain, a flight attendant tells her that a woman who had a nut allergy was in anaphylactic shock and her throat was rapidly swelling shut.

When Cami steps into the cabin, two other doctors—one an orthopedic surgeon and the other a radiologist greet her with a pressing question: what kind of doctor are you?  Because, although both had gone to medical school, neither was trained specifically for this type of medical emergency.  Relief washed over their faces when Cami replied that she was an Emergency Doc.

They were right to be relieved, this is what Emergency doctors do!—they stabilize patients who are in life-threatening situations.  They work great under pressure and they know how to treat anaphylactic shock.

In fact, (ironically) Cami gives a lecture to medical students entitled “Is There a Doctor on the Plane?” in which she discusses how to utilize the emergency kit provided on airplanes.  Seriously. 

And so, Cami cracks open the kit.  She finds the meds she needs and gets to work.  With the orthopedic surgeon acting as her nurse, Cami starts with oral Benadryl, but the woman struggles to swallow this since her throat is so swollen.  Next, Cami gives a shot of epinephrine, but the suffering woman, who is not really breathing at all, feels no relief. 

Another passenger offers up his kid’s steroid medicine. Cami snatches it up as this can really help.  But, even with the meds she already administered, the woman is still not getting better.  She needs the additional meds from the second emergency kit on the airplane, but if you open the second bag, you are supposed to land emergently.  Since the plane is over the Pacific Ocean, that is not an option.  They are still 3 hours from LA, so they open the second kit.

Meanwhile, you should know that since the patient is slumped in her chair, Cami is having to squat in the aisle next to her.  Squat!  Remember how much Cami's quads hurt?  This is no laughing matter.

Somehow Cami is able to start an IV and is preparing to administer a dose of medicine every minute or so until landing, when little by little, the woman seems to be improving.  The meds finally start to take effect and she can breathe again.

The plane continues it’s course all the way to Dallas where the woman refuses medical treatment and hops on her connecting flight to Connecticut.  Cami hobbles to her own connecting flight to Florida after just having saved someone’s life post Ironman. 

The End.

True story.  Not Television or a movie—this actually happened!

I mean—can you even imagine?

I’ve been inspired by this story since I heard it.  I could not finish an Ironman event because I have not trained.  I could not save that woman’s life, because I didn’t go to medical school and I didn’t even know the airplane had emergency medical kits (let alone give a lecture on airplane emergency procedures).  I mean, seriously, you could not have a better doctor on that flight!  Cami had special skills and she used them!

But the more I’ve thought about this story, the more I realized that I have skills too and so do you!  Sure, maybe you haven’t trained to run a super triathlon and maybe you can’t literally save a person’s life, but God has placed you in certain places at certain times with certain skills. 

It’s not always going to be a dramatic, life or death situation. 

Did you grow up helping your dad work on cars?  Well, when your neighbor’s car won’t start and you happen to be in your driveway at just the right time, that’s no coincidence. 

Or maybe you were a math major and you overhear a friend complaining that she doesn’t know how to help her fifth-grader with homework.  Step right up!—that’s just like the captain calling for a doctor—only it’s your friend calling for a math tutor.  (You could actually be saving that kid’s life from his frustrated mom.) 

Maybe you have a secret past of working as a hairdresser while you put yourself through college and you find out that the family across the street can’t afford haircuts since the husband was laid off work.  Dust off your scissors--Snip-snip!

Maybe you are an illustrator with connections and you randomly meet a woman who has just finished a children’s story, which needs illustrations and would love to be published.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Maybe you grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and you happen to be in a dentist office when a new patient is having a hard time understanding the receptionist’s questions because English is her second language…Spanish is her first.  You can help!  

Maybe you are really tall and end up in the grocery aisle with a vertically challenged old lady peering up at the cornstarch on the top shelf.  Use your gift, Dude!

Maybe you feel like you have no special training—maybe the only thing you learned in college is how to drink.  Well don’t be surprised if some night, you are able to truly help a friend who needs some cheering up…(as well as your famous hangover cure the next day.) 

I’m not equating all of these things with the life-saving heroics Cami performed on an airplane—but I truly believe that God uses the training of our past to help others in ways we don’t always expect. 

And let’s not forget that Cami did all of this when she was not feeling her best.  Her body was exhausted.  Her leg muscles were shot—and yet, God strengthened her for the task.  So, if you hear the call for a Mechanic, math tutor, hairdresser, illustrator, translator, tall person, friend but you have a massive headache or you are super busy with important things, think about Cami stopping her work and pulling herself out of her airplane seat and limping down the aisle.  You are the perfect person for this. You were trained for this and you will not have to do it in your own strength!

So, what’s the Captain calling you to do?