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| Contributed Photo Jeanine Watson of Caribou, left, joins DJ Spooner, a flight nurse and supervisor of Crown Critical Care Transport, in front of the plane she rode on a year ago Christmas Eve when she required emergency care due to a heart attack. Watson credits the critical care crew with saving her life. |
Credits critical care efforts
Last Christmas Eve, while Santa was busy flying about, there was a miracle of a different kind taking place in the skies – and one Caribou woman has much to be grateful for this holiday season thanks in large part to Crown Critical Care Transport.
On Christmas Eve, 2012, Jeanine Watson was enjoying the holiday at her home in Caribou with her husband, children, grandchildren and other family. It was common for the family to open presents on Christmas Eve and to celebrate her husband Paul’s birthday on Christmas Day.
Just after the family finished exchanging gifts, she began to experience a feeling of pressure and heaviness in her neck. Then the feeling started to spread lower into her arms and chest. Paul recognized the symptoms as a potential heart attack, and in just six minutes, he had her at the emergency room at Cary Medical Center.
“I was very scared,” said Watson as she recalled that evening. “I didn’t really know what was happening.”
By the time she arrived, her pain had worsened. The emergency staff realized she was, in fact, having a massive heart attack. Doctors stabilized her and called Crown to bring her to Eastern Maine Medical Center.
Darrell (DJ) Spooner, supervisor of CCCT and a critical care nurse, was the flight nurse on duty that Christmas Eve, along with critical care paramedic Travis Ginn. Spooner said in a rural area, hours away from hospitals which have specialized equipment and staff to treat certain serious medical events, CCCT provides a vital service.
“We transport critically ill and injured patients out of everywhere in Aroostook County to anywhere from Bangor to Boston, usually for a higher level of care,” he explained. “Any specialized, interventional, definitive treatments that may be lifesaving are usually two to four hours away.”
Spooner and the critical care team flew Watson in one of the two fixed-wing planes reserved for such missions. The planes, one each in Presque Isle and Caribou, are contracted from Fresh Air out of Caribou. Owner Bill Belanger provides the staff to fly the planes. Spooner said they use planes rather than helicopters because helicopters have trouble operating in inclement weather.
Watson starting feeling worse shortly after the team transporting her took off in the Caribou-based aircraft. At approximately 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, she went into cardiac arrest and lost consciousness.
“We were six minutes out of Bangor when she went unconscious and was technically dead,” said Spooner. “We defibrillated her and gave her medications and got her conscious again.”
The crew called ahead to the hospital to have a team waiting when they arrived.
Watson has a difficult time remembering her flight. Mostly, she recalls the medical staff wrapping her in a flight blanket and putting her on a stretcher, but she also remembers that she was never alone.
“I remember seeing a nurse sitting beside me, asking me if I was okay. The next thing I remember was waking up in cardiac ICU, and my husband walked into the room,” she said. In her opinion, the critical transport care she received made all the difference.
“If it wasn’t for Crown CCT I would not be alive today. My heart stopped in the plane, and my nurse DJ Spooner defibrillated my heart and brought me back to life,” she said.
Spooner agrees that the service Crown CCT provides, with highly trained nurses and paramedics, is a vital resource to the Aroostook community. “Without Crown CCT and the extensive training that we do, many people in The County would not have as good outcomes as they do today.”
Critical care employees have regular scheduled trainings two days per month to maintain their level of expertise.
As for Watson, recovery has been a long road, but she remains optimistic.
“My recovery has been one day at a time. I have good days and bad,” she said. “I returned to work in February. TAMC Cardiac Rehab helped me tremendously. I still do not have the stamina I used to have, but I keep trying.”
It might be hard to match the gift of life she and her family received last year, but her husband will always be grateful for his wife’s health.
“Paul said it was the worst and best Christmas ever – worst because I had a heart attack and died, best because I was brought back to life and we could hold hands and be together on Christmas Day.”
