One evening, Rean, driver of ambucycle 267 went to a restaurant with his friends, celebrating a chatan about to be wed. The food was served and Rean took his first bite when his beeper alerted him to an emergency. Calling good-bye as he ran out the door, Rean jumped onto his ambucycle and raced to save a life. He was at the address in under 2 minutes!

The first thing that hit him when he entered the apartment was the tremendous tension – the family was in complete hysteria. In a second, Rean understood why as he faced the most difficult situation he had ever encountered as a United Hatzalah volunteer. A 2 year-old child had his fingers trapped in a meat grinder.

The experienced medic let calm professionalism kick in as he spoke gently to the child and assessed the situation. There was no blood so the risk of life-threatening hemorrhaging was minimal but the closed entrapment was cutting off blood flow to the rest of the hand. The resourceful United Hatzalah volunteer managed to gently extricate the hand as the ambulance arrived and rushed him to hospital for emergency treatment.

The little boy spent two weeks in hospital. He lost 4 fingers, but doctors said that had his hand remained trapped any longer, the rest of the hand may have been compromised as well. Today, Rean sees the child playing with his friends in the street like any other child. His ambucycle enabled the little boy to receive medical care in the minutes he needed it most.