On Thursday morning in Kiryat Ata, United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Yechezkel Solomons was getting ready to bring home his wife and new baby boy from the hospital. Yechezkel’s wife had given birth two days before, and he had just finished preparing all of the essentials for the baby that morning. He went out to pray the morning prayers and just as they finished, and Yehezkel was about to leave the synagogue to drive to the hospital, a fellow United Hatzalah volunteer Yechiel Chingell called out to him.
“Yechezkel! There’s an emergency CPR on a child in progress on Pinsker Street!” Sharing a momentary, knowing glance, the pair ran outside to their respective cars and drove to the nearby location.
Running into the apartment, Yechezkel and Yechiel joined fellow United Hatzalah EMTs Naftali Rottenberg and Tzemach Elias in administering CPR on a nine-year-old girl who had been found unresponsive in her bed. Another EMT, Shoshana Guttman, who lives in the building but was out doing errands when the emergency occurred rushed in a step behind Yechiel end Yehezkel.
Working in synchronicity, the team of first responders attached defibrillator pads to the young girl’s chest and back and then alternated between chest compressions and artificial ventilation. The defibrillator did not advise a shock.
The team worked tirelessly to bring back the girl’s pulse. Ten minutes later a mobile intensive care ambulance arrived just as the United Hatzalah volunteers brought her pulse back. Shoshana, who knows the family, went over to comfort the horrified parents and as the girl was prepped for transport and was taken to the hospital, her mother joined her in the ambulance. Shoshana took the distraught father in her own car and drove him to the hospital as well so that he could be with his wife and daughter.
A few hours later, after bringing home the newest addition to his family, Yechezkel received an update from the hospital that the girl’s condition was stable. Doctors had determined that the child had haplessly found and overdosed on a relative’s prescription painkillers.
Fortunately, the United Hatzalah team had arrived quickly and started CPR before it was too late. As he held his newborn son, Yechezkel reflected on a momentous morning and was grateful that the rapid response that he and his United Hatzalah colleagues had administered had successfully saved the young girl’s life and kept her family whole.
The next morning the girl woke up. She was discharged from the hospital on Sunday and came back home in full health. The volunteers went to pay a visit to the girl they saved at the behest of the family in order to give the family a chance to say thank you.
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