During a routine home visit, Kupat Holim Leumit nurse Annie Or gives cardiovascular resuscitation to elderly woman just in time.
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICHElderly_521(photo credit: Illustrative photo: MCT)
A Kupat Holim Leumit nurse making a routine home visit this week saved the life of an 87-year-old Netanya woman whom she found without a heartbeat.The nurse, Annie Or, 47, entered the apartment of the woman, who had a Filipina caregiver. “Grandma is not OK. I don’t know what happened to her,” the anxious caregiver told the nurse.Seeing the woman’s situation, she gave her cardiovascular resuscitation just minutes before the woman would have died, said the health fund.“I found her breathing her last breaths while she was in the bathroom. Her eyeballs were raised upward, and a few moments after I arrived, she stopped breathing. With help from the caregiver, we lay her on the floor in the position necessary for heart massage,” said Or.
In such cases, there is usually little chance to succeed, said the nurse, “but fortunately, the woman reacted to the treatment and began to vomit. I turned her on her side so she wouldn’t choke and called Magen David Adom and members of her family. She regained consciousness and even thanked me for saving her life.”The ambulance team said the woman was experiencing cardiac arrest and that if the nurse had not arrived exactly when she did, the woman would be dead.“I felt such joy and fulfillment,” said Or. “I can’t describe it in words.”
