2 minute read
World Builders
Rescue in a Yarkon Hotel
By Raphael Poch
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Afew weeks ago, on Tuesday, at 12:30 p.m., United Hatzalah’s Dispatch and Command Center received a phone call regarding a serious injury that had just taken place in a Tel Aviv hotel on HaYarkon Street. The dispatching system automatically alerted the five closest volunteers to the emergency.
United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Lior Ashkenazi was one of those volunteers. Upon receiving the alert, Lior ran to his ambucycle, turned the switch, and rushed off to the hotel, cutting through the busy afternoon traffic and arriving in less than three minutes. He dismounted from his ambucycle, grabbed his medical kit, and rushed inside to the lobby where he was met by the hotel manager. The manager ushered Lior upstairs to the hotel room where the incident had occurred.
Lior tried opening the hotel room door but it was locked from the inside. The manager directed Lior to an alternative door from an adjacent room. That door wouldn’t budge ei
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ther. The determined EMT knew that it was imperative to get inside the room as a life may be dependent on it. He put his shoulder to the door and pushed as hard as he could until he finally managed to move the closet that had been blocking the door, gaining entry to the room.
“When I got inside, at first glance, I thought that it was all over. It had looked like a murder scene straight from the TV,” said Lior. “The entire floor was covered with blood. I found a man lying motionless on the hotel bed, and it seemed impossible to me that he could still be alive.”
Lior ran over to the patient, moved the blood-soaked quilt, and checked the man’s pulse. He looked at the man’s chest to assess his breathing and surprisingly saw that it was rising and falling. Despite losing a lot of blood, the man still had a heartbeat and was still breathing.
Lior saw deep lacerations on the man’s wrists and neck. As there was no one else in the room and the doors had been blocked from the inside, it appeared that the man had attempted to take his own life.
Another United Hatzalah volunteer, Dr. Oren Sagiv, a physician who volunteers with United Hatzalah and often does ambulance shifts, arrived and assisted together with a third volunteer, also an ambucycle driver.
Together, the three first responders took the sheets and covered the neck wound to stem the hemorrhaging while Lior set up an IV line and began to administer fluids to help raise the man’s blood pressure. They then bandaged the wrist wounds, and Dr. Sagiv administered oxygen. The
three volunteers fought to stabilize the man and then transferred him onto a backboard and rushed him out to the ambulance that had just arrived and was waiting to transport the man to the nearest trauma center.
“I’m glad that I arrived soon enough to help save the man,” Lior said. “Had I been even a few moments later or had I waited to open the room, the outcome may have been very different. Thankfully, the man is now receiving the physical and psychological care he needs and is on his way to recovery.”
