Morgan Anderson – who is terrified of flying – had forgotten entirely that she was on a plane. She didn't have time to think about anything other than the matter at hand. She and her mother, Rose Anderson, were busy saving a man's life.
"I didn't feel like I was in the air, thousands of feet above the world. I just got tunnel vision and focused on him and my mom," Morgan said, recounting her extraordinary experience while flying across the country earlier this month.
At about 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 13, Morgan and her mom, both of whom live in East Asheville, were in the air on their way to Salt Lake City when the plane's PA system cut on. There was a medical emergency, and the flight attendant was asking for help from any medical professionals aboard. Rose heard the call and nudged Morgan, who had fallen asleep. Both women are nurses, and they had a job to do.
They made their way toward the front of the airliner, where they found their patient, a man who appeared to be in his 60s, according to Rose. He was unresponsive, slouched over in his seat and his shirt was covered in vomit. He was in worse condition than either Rose or Morgan anticipated.
"When we saw him, my mom and I looked at each other, and we were like 'Oh, God,'" Morgan said.
Rose, 57, works as an ER nurse at the VA Medical Center. She has more than 30 years of experience in the field, so she took the lead. The first step: figuring out what was wrong with the man, whom a Delta spokesman declined to name, citing the company's privacy policy.
Morgan, 26, graduated from nursing school in May 2016 and went to work for Mission Hospital. Following her mom's lead, she began to inventory the airplane's medical supplies. Among them: a needle, a catheter, four 250 ml bags of saline solution, IV tubing and a blood-pressure cuff, all of which would prove necessary in saving his life.
The man's blood pressure registered 56/30, or as Morgan puts it, "the brink of death." Ideally, his blood pressure would be around 120/60. He was in hypovolemic shock, likely due to extreme dehydration, Rose determined, and he needed fluid.
"His blood pressure was too low," Rose told the Citizen Times. "If somebody hadn't done something to correct that, he probably would've gone into cardiac arrest and died."
Morgan gave her mom the needle and catheter from the medical kit and helped her hook the man to an IV to begin rehydrating him thereby raising his blood pressure. It would typically take two to three liters of saline in order to properly care for the man, Rose and Morgan said, but they had to make do with the materials available.
"It was like walking a tight rope, keeping him all right with what we had," Rose said.
As the mother and daughter duo worked to save their patient, they relayed his vital information to a physician on the ground. Many commercial airlines rely on ground-based medical consulting hubs, where physicians can walk plane staff through in-air medical emergencies. These physicians ultimately decide whether to reroute planes for emergency landings. In this case, the physician, based out of Pittsburgh, decided that the ill man was in stable enough condition to avoid a costly diversion.
After several minutes on the IV, the man regained consciousness and was able to speak and drink water on his own. He told Rose and Morgan, who continued to care for him until the plane landed, that he was on his way to visit his mother. The man was in stable condition when paramedics took over after they landed.
The pilot thanked the Andersons and the flight attendant gave them a bottle of wine and vouchers for a discount off their next flight. In an email to the Citizen Times, Michael Thomas, a Delta spokesman, said the company "sincerely appreciates the efforts of these medical professionals who came to the aid of one of our customers who fell ill on a recent flight."
"It's always good to have a happy ending," Rose said.
Because of the emergency, the plane made completed the 4 1/2-hour flight in just over three hours, Rose and Morgan said. The pilot hadn't diverted the plane, but he definitely sped it up.
The medical emergency had also provided Morgan and her mom with an experience Morgan had long wanted and didn't think she'd get. Growing up, Morgan would volunteer at the hospital where Rose worked whenever she could to see her mom in action.
"Morgan kinda followed in my footsteps," Rose said, and Morgan doesn't deny that. In fact, according to Morgan, it was her mom who inspired her to be a nurse.
"I didn't think I'd ever get to work with my mom because she's approaching retirement," Morgan said. "As down on his luck as that guy was, he actually gave me a neat experience with my mom. I'm just glad he was all right and got to spend time with his mom, too."
