Volume 25
Number 19
September 19, 2014
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
The
Saveof a
Lifetime
“ I am so grateful for everyone who helped me when I needed it.”
`` Todd Tewksbury with Aaron Mendelson, MD, one of the people who helped save his life.
Running along the Schuykill River Trail was a frequent outing for Todd Tewksbury, a 27-year-old mechanical engineer. So when he started his run one evening last month, the last place he expected to end up was in HUP’s emergency room. “I remembered passing the Philadelphia Museum and starting to feel a little woozy,” Tewksbury said. “After that, nothing.”
Inside Celebrating Those Who CARE..................................2 PPMC Annual Cultural Diversity Conference.................2 Helping Others Get Back on Their Feet.....................3
Very luckily, two doctors were running behind him when he collapsed. “We thought at first he was seizing, so I started rubbing his chest to control the seizure while my wife [Kristine Schultz, MD, chief resident of Emergency Medicine at Christiana Care Health System] made sure his airway was open,” said Aaron Mendelson, MD, a third-year internal medicine resident at HUP. But it clearly wasn’t helping. Tewksbury’s heart had stopped beating and he remained unconscious. He was in cardiac arrest. Mendelson immediately switched to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to keep the flow of blood — and oxygen — flowing to Tewksbury’s organs. Others who saw what was happening helped as well. “It was a community effort. Some helped do the compressions. Another person went
to a local rec center and got an AED [automated external defibrillator],” Mendelson said. Someone else called 911 and other bystanders directed the EMS team to the right location.. “They couldn’t drive up because it was a pedestrian path.” One person reached out to Tewksbury’s family on his cell phone. As it turned out, Lois Tewksbury had just spoken to her son. So, when her phone rang again and she saw who was calling, she answered, kiddingly, “What did you forget?” But, instead of hearing his voice, a stranger was telling her that her son had an emergency and was heading over to the ER at HUP. Thanks to the quick responses of the many good Samaritans and the HUP (Continued on page 4)
Making Cancer Glow................3
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