By Josh Resnek
For those of us who have had medical issues, whose lives have been occasionally interrupted by life threatening situations inside our homes or at the hospital or in the workplace, the Lamar Hamlin story is a reminder just how fragile life can be.
Think about it, as we suspect you have since the story came to dominate United States news windows last week, Hamlin, a professional football player, is alive today because trained medical technicians raced to his side when he collapsed on the field and his heart stopped beating.
Those medical technicians saved his life with CPR and by jolting his heart with a defibrillator.
That’s what Hamlin needed to sustain life, to sustain his life.
Here is a young man in the prime of his physical life, muscular and toned, fast and tough, unafraid of anything physical on the field that might touch him.
He makes a tackle. He gets up from the field. He takes two steps and he collapses.
His heart has stopped.
He is, for all intents and purposes, heading in a very bad direction.
But for the trained medical technicians who saved his life, he would not be here today.
He also has given thanks to the battery of cardiologists, nurses and hospital support staff who watched over him until the ventilator was removed from his throat and he breathed on his own – and his family wept that God has been good to him and that he would live to see many more days in life that will be drastically changed.
There is a hook here to Everett.
There is a new ambulance sitting in the Hancock Fire House that was purchased many months back for $500,000. It has not yet gone into service because of union money negotiations.
At this time, 55 out of 100 Everett firefighters, are trained EMTS. Soon that number will rise to 65 as a new class of EMTS is being trained right now.
In a few months, the ambulance now sitting inside the Hancock Street Fire Station will out and about, in service, manned by EMTS-firefighters who will all be capable of doing what was done to Hamlin on the football field.
In the meantime, Cataldo Ambulance medical technicians roam the city’s streets, doing about 1800 emergency calls a year in Everett.
Saving Hamlin’s life was one thing. What Hamlin must do now is entirely another.
He needs to recover from the seriousness of the cardiac arrest he suffered.
Those of you who suffer from heart problems could well tell him that the recovery process from such a jolt can be very difficult – not just physically but mentally.
The hospital saves us but the health issue such as Hamlin suffered causes muscles to atrophy overnight, and for the man of steel to be reduced to a mere mortal in the span of days.
Lamar Hamlin is never going to play football again.
At 24, that’s a tough pill to swallow for an elite athlete facing a great future in professional football.
But he is alive. He is cheering on his teammates. His recovery has been an inspiration to Americans hooked on football.
The real heroes in this story are the technicians who reached him on the field and who had the training, the desire and the ability to bring him back to life.
Those medical technicians acted like Gods when Hamlin collapsed.
It is the very same thing for the trained EMTS from Cataldo and from the Everett Fire Department that come to your home to give medical aid whenever called in this city.
Soon enough, those trained medical technicians will be Everett firefighter/EMT’s in the city ambulance bringing immediate aid to those beset by emergency medical problems.
That day can’t happen soon enough.