If you have a Medical Emergency – someone has stopped breathing due to a drug overdose, you have called 911 and are waiting for medical professionals to arrive, please skip the story and scroll to the bottom of this blog to read my suggestions to help start someone breathing again or try Rescue Breathing.
I am NOT a Medical Doctor. This is a SUGGESTION ONLY!
Because this method worked once, I have no idea if it will work again, but it’s certainly worth trying if you can save a life!
I am posting this story because I feel it is important to let people know a simple, non-intrusive method to help someone while waiting for medical professionals to arrive.
This blog is illustrated with a series of photos of how a painting developed, which I recently completed for a friend.
This account is one of the strangest dramas ever in my life…one of those days when I understood my life was truly being arranged by a Living Father in Heaven, who Loves the people He has made.
As many know, my work as a freelance artist allows me to go places on the spur of the moment, because I am not tied down to a 9-5 job.
There are huge upsides and downsides to living this sort of life.
I have often said, “God sends me places”…this became all the more apparent last October, as I was unexpectedly put in the right place at the right time, to help save a young man’s life.
It had been a hot summer in Florida, four months of care-giving and cooking for two elderly ladies.
One had fallen and injured her knee. She needed more help than the other lady, who was diabetic and looking pale and wan when I arrived.
Both ladies improved with good food and some care after four somewhat difficult months.
While my time there had accomplished much, now I was told I must leave, to enable the lady with the healing knee to become stronger. She needed to regain her muscle strength through movement and I was doing too much for her...
I had already changed my original plans to return north in September, purchasing different $1 Megabus tickets for mid-October, after one lady had fallen again, injuring herself in August.
While biking in mid-August, I had also been injured.
The driver of a car at an intersection had not seen me on the sidewalk, biking against traffic, and had pulled directly in front of me - hitting the front wheel of my bicycle.
Unable to stop in time, my body crashed into the side of the car - going airborne from the impact of the windshield hitting me, and coming down hard on the heel of my left ankle, on top of my bicycle.
My left hand was lacerated in the accident and my left shoulder, leg and ankle were all badly bruised.
The ankle had rested for weeks before I’d tried walking any distance, but my foot was swollen and painful - not healing properly. Something internal was wrong and I needed to return to Vermont, where I could see a doctor I trusted.
I also wanted to replant my garlic seed before snow arrived.
The day before I left Florida, one of the elderly ladies managed to fall off a chair onto the grass, outdoors.
Then I badly sliced my right index finger, while foolishly trying to cut through rock-hard orange rind. The sharp knife slipped and then I had a deep cut, bleeding away…
I was wondering if I was supposed to be leaving Florida after all. I didn’t know if I could tote my heavy luggage and computer with the swollen foot, once arriving in NYC.
And now I also had a bandaged finger. Plus there were the ladies future health to consider…
A kind friend ferried me 2.5 hours north on Wednesday, October 16, 2019, just south of Orlando, where I stayed overnight with old family friends. I planned to catch Megabus early the next morning.
The husband of the couple I was staying with overnight took me to Kissimmee, Florida early on Thursday morning, October 17th.
It was still dark outside and the street address was exactly the same as the Orlando Megabus stop street address, but the town was wrong…we neglected to put the town and zip code in the GPS!
“We’re in the wrong location, I don’t see a bus stop!”
“I’m sorry, Elise, we’re going to miss your 7 AM bus” my host, Paul said, with a worried tone.
“Traffic is bumper-to-bumper going into Orlando and it’s already 6:40 AM! I can’t get you there in time!!”
He was very upset.
My heart fell with a thump into my stomach and I felt pretty terrible.
All this trying to go north and “road-blocks” seemed everywhere.
I had been praying hard for direction and timing…but just faced more and more difficulties!
Then a happy thought came.
In case of bad weather, like a hurricane, way back in August I’d purchased an extra $1 ticket - so I could choose to leave Atlanta on one of two consecutive days.
I had questioned myself when I bought the tickets…wasn’t I just wasting the dollar and keeping someone else from having a cheap ride? But I bought it. I could afford an extra dollar…
I didn’t know then this ticket option would help save a life!
“Calm down,” I quickly encouraged Paul.
“I have an ‘extra’ one-dollar ticket leaving Atlanta, Georgia tomorrow, so if I just buy the ticket going from Orlando to Atlanta, I can still leave - but tomorrow morning instead of today!”
This worked out, even though the ticket was now $35, purchased the day before.
Now there was a whole day to catch up with Paul and Cheryl, old family friends who have traveled the world in full-time ministry for Christ!
The next morning Paul and I arrived at the bus stop an hour early.
I boarded, beginning the long 1,300-mile journey north to NYC on Megabus, leaving Friday morning, October 18th.
My older sister hadn’t even heard of the missed Thursday bus dilemma, but I later heard she had remarked due to all the difficulties, “Doesn’t Elise get it, she’s not supposed to leave Florida?”
It sure looked like this may have been the case. So many things had to be pressed through, just to get on that bus!
I was determined to go home!
I had been searching online for work to get through the winter...and still didn't really know what I would be doing, but felt my time in Florida was completed, for now.
There were several bus stops to pick up more passengers at different Floridian towns as we headed north into Georgia.
I decided not to get off the bus at the Tifton, Georgia, lunch and restroom stop, thinking it best to rest my swollen foot.
After eating some lunch, I tried to sleep again on the back bench of the bus.
Our bus driver announced we were now heading to our final destination, Atlanta.
But five minutes into this last leg of the Atlanta journey, I felt the bus suddenly pull over to the side of the highway and stop.
I sat up from my favorite upper-level back bench seat, wondering why, perhaps the bus had mechanical issues?
About six or eight rows in front of my upper-level seat, I saw two men standing in the bus aisle, gently slapping someone seated on the left side of the bus in the face with their hands.
They were saying, “Stay with us, Buddy, stay with us,” “Breathe, breathe!”
We all later learned a young man riding on our bus had overdosed on drugs at the Tifton, GA lunch stop, five minutes earlier.
Edward (I learned his name later), a young man seated on the other side of the aisle, had seen the breathing issue and run downstairs to tell the bus driver to pull over and call 911 - we had a medical emergency on board the bus.
This alert young man saved a life that day through his willingness to help a total stranger sitting across the bus aisle.
I stayed where I was seated and watched. I told myself that they were probably doing all they could and not to get involved.
Seconds passed, perhaps a few minutes. It didn’t look good.
Without really thinking about it, my body rose from the bench seat and I slowly went forward thinking, “maybe I can do something to help.”
The seated man stopped breathing just as I arrived behind his seat.
“He’s stopped breathing!!” one man exclaimed, “Let’s get him on the floor of the bus!”
The two men worked together to lift the man’s body onto the narrow foot-wide aisle on the top floor of the Megabus.
Before the man in trouble blacked-out, I heard him make a high, fear-filled whining sound.
The two heroic men helping him put the young man on the floor of the bus, in-between the narrow seats, and prepared to give him CPR...
Edward checked the wrist pulse of the young man not breathing, and realized the man in trouble still had a strong heartbeat!
CPR cannot be administered when someone has a strong pulse!
Edward, the young man who had seen the breathing issue and stopped the bus, now didn't know what to do. I saw him look up at the other man helping him. They gave each other a blank stare…
Bus passengers began to gather around the seats near the man on the floor. The bus driver had come upstairs and we were all waiting for the emergency medical folks to arrive.
I looked down at the floor and saw the man's face turning grey from lack of oxygen.
"He's going grey, he's GOING GREY!" I announced this loudly to the entire bus with my big voice.
I involuntarily offered aloud with authority, "He needs salt on the tip of his tongue, to stimulate the brain to breathe!"
Edward, trying desperately to save a life, responded with a question,
"Who's got salt?!" He spread his hand around, asking the entire bus.
"I have salt," I said, remembering suddenly!
I turned and ran back to my bench seat, grabbing my tiny salt bottle from my open purse, forgetting my painful foot entirely.
While eating my lunch minutes before, I had just used salt on my hard-boiled eggs. Thankfully, I didn’t have to dig around looking for it!
I ran back to the men, twisting open the top of my tiny plastic bottle full of Pink Himalayan sea salt as I went.
I shook a half-teaspoon of salt onto my hand and then dumped this in Edward’s outstretched hand.
“Just put a little on the tip of his tongue!” I said.
Edward, a total stranger to me, did exactly what I told him, putting salt on the tip of the dying man's tongue.
Then my mouth opened and I spoke again, without consciously thinking, just telling him what to do next.
"Now, pinch him here, right below the nose," I showed him, "and pinch him HARD!!"
It came out as a firm command.
Edward listened. He was on his knees at the head of the man who by now had a dark gray face from lack of oxygen.
He pinched under the man's nose, and just as he let go, the man instantly breathed in!!
Nearly everyone on the top level of the bus was now crowded around watching the drama play out, and they all gasped loudly in surprise, as he breathed, and then continued breathing!
"Oh Thank God!" I exclaimed, "Praise God!" This rang throughout the bus.
The tension in the air reduced as the grey face of the man on the floor cleared up immediately, turning pink again.
His eyes were rolled back in his head and he was totally unresponsive, but he was breathing evenly and alive!
Edward's quick response to a problem and his taking initiative to help a stranger seated near him saved a life.
And God had reminded me in the moment how to stimulate the brain using Chinese Medicine, thanks to my mom's teaching.
How bizarre is that?!!
I had used this “pinch the frenum” method once before, many years earlier, to bring my mother out of a scary low blood pressure/low blood sugar incident when she was unable to speak.
It had worked to wake her brain up then, and somehow the Holy Spirit had brought it to mind!
Edward was still on his knees on the floor at the head of the now-breathing man, checking to make sure his breathing kept going.
I put my hand on Edward’s shoulder, and told him, “You did a GREAT JOB!”
We looked around to find the unconscious man's possessions in his seat and found his cell phone.
Edward quickly handed me the man’s cell phone which was still unlocked, after pressing his mother’s number. The ill man on the floor had been texting his mother just before he stopped breathing!
“Here, talk to his mother,” Edward now instructed me. The phone was ringing.
“I am very sorry to tell you this, but your son is on the top floor of a Megabus just outside of Tifton, Georgia,” I told his mother.
“He is breathing, he wasn’t before, but he is now.”
“Call 911, call 911!!” his mother pleaded.
“They are already on their way,” I told her.
“Can you tell me his name?” I asked her. She gave it to me, and I asked her to spell it. I asked for his date of birth. Her son was twenty-nine years old.
I asked the men on the bus, “What else should I ask?”
“Allergies, ask if he has any allergies”, the man helping Edward wisely suggested. So we learned he was allergic to Prostatin, and one other drug, Penicillin, I think.
“Can you tell me anything else that could help us?” I asked his mother.
“He has a former history of drug abuse,” she said.
I thanked her and hung up. I neglected to get her name and phone number to find out later how her son was…
The young man was still comatose, but alive and breathing when the EMTs arrived several long minutes later.
They checked the man’s vitals and planned to give him a NARCAN solution and IV, after getting him off the bus on a backboard.
Moving the man took a long time, perhaps ten minutes, because of the awkward and tight situation with so many seats and a very narrow bus aisle.
His arms kept falling down because they couldn't reach around to strap them on the board.
“We had plenty of help,” the Megabus driver proudly told the State Troopers who had arrived with the Ambulance and Fire Department.
I told one of the Officers the identification information the mother had told me. The ladies downstairs shared what they had seen at the lunch stop regarding drugs put into a drink…
I also tried to tell one of the Police Officers how we got him to start breathing again, but from the look on his face, he didn’t believe me…
I called Paul and his wife to say, “Paul, I have a prayer request…and I think I was definitely on the right bus!”
My brother then told me people in opioid drug overdose situations are dying not because their heart stops, but because their breathing stops.
I’ve since learned that in NYC alone, one person dies every six hours, due to drug overdoses.
Our bus finally started north again, sans one ill passenger.
I went forward and sat down next to Edward to ask his name and introduce myself.
“Do you know the meaning of your name?” I asked Edward. “No,” he shook his head.
“Well, ‘ward’ has to do with ‘warden’ and so Edward means something like, “One who Shepherds or takes care of others,” I told him.
He was so pleased to learn this!
“When I was eight years old, my mother died,” Edward told me. “And my dad went to jail around that time. So, when I graduated from high school, I didn’t have a mother or a father.”
“When I am with my friends they don’t get into any trouble,” he said. “My presence seems to help people stay out of trouble,”
I learned Edward was now twenty-five and was working at a call center in Atlanta.
After getting off the bus in Atlanta, Edward gave me a big hug.
I got in line for my next bus, leaving for Washington, D.C. and saw the young man’s luggage lying on the pavement…
I tried to learn later that night what happened to this young man, but HIPAA regulations wouldn't even let me learn if the man lived or died...and I hadn’t thought to write down his mom's phone number off his phone.
However, in googling his name while writing this blog, I learned only two weeks ago that he LIVES!
Thankfully, my bus schedule allowed for a three-to-four-hour layover in Atlanta.
Our Orlando bus arrived a couple hours later than scheduled, due to the emergency stop, but there was still time to catch my night bus heading north to Washington, D.C. and then transfer on to NYC.
It was a long forty-hour bus ride, but for $1 I wasn’t complaining. Megabus is a GREAT bus company!!!
I was pretty stunned the entire ride by what had happened, thinking of all which had transpired to change my initial plan, so I’d get on “the right bus”!
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
I tried to keep my swollen foot elevated during the bus ride, dragging it when walking to the bathroom, and people stared.
I looked pretty lame and it was pretty painful.
But God had used me in my weakness – with my swollen foot and my cut finger!
I learned my ankle was jammed when I arrived in Vermont. It was a full six months before the ankle pain went away but it’s back to normal now.
Even the accident in August, when the car hit my bicycle and the lady falling in August were part of my needing to go north, but in October, not September!
My garlic went into the ground just before it snowed and I harvested that bed recently. I am grateful.
1. Use one tiny pinch of salt on the tip of the tongue
2. Pinch the Frenum HARD, with your thumb and index finger, a point just under the Nose, here:
You can hold the pinch for up to seven seconds. This point has a nerve or electrical meridian connected to the brain and will stimulate the brain, waking someone up from a low-blood pressure/low blood sugar attack. I’ve heard it can also help re-start the heart. In this case, it was used to help stimulate the Central Nervous System to tell the brain to BREATHE.
From what I can gather of anatomy, the “Philtrum” is the exterior part of the face just under the nose and above the upper lip. The FRENUM is the inner attachment you can feel under your upper lip with your tongue. You want to pinch deeply, high up underneath the nose, to catch the Frenum.
Our brain and central nervous system were designed to tell our lungs to breathe without our having to think about it.
Too often, we take the breath which gives us life for granted!
With Reverence for the Gift of Life,
I remain your friend,
Elise
“And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”
~ II Corinthians 12:9-10
O worship the King, all glorious above,
O tell of His might, O sing of His grace,
Thy bountiful care what tongue can recite?
Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
I am NOT a Medical Doctor. This is a SUGGESTION ONLY!
 |
| "Summertime and the Livin' is Easy" 8x10 watercolor by Elise, 2020, Private Collection. |
I am posting this story because I feel it is important to let people know a simple, non-intrusive method to help someone while waiting for medical professionals to arrive.
This blog is illustrated with a series of photos of how a painting developed, which I recently completed for a friend.
Four Months in Florida
This account is one of the strangest dramas ever in my life…one of those days when I understood my life was truly being arranged by a Living Father in Heaven, who Loves the people He has made.
As many know, my work as a freelance artist allows me to go places on the spur of the moment, because I am not tied down to a 9-5 job.
There are huge upsides and downsides to living this sort of life.
I have often said, “God sends me places”…this became all the more apparent last October, as I was unexpectedly put in the right place at the right time, to help save a young man’s life.
It had been a hot summer in Florida, four months of care-giving and cooking for two elderly ladies.
One had fallen and injured her knee. She needed more help than the other lady, who was diabetic and looking pale and wan when I arrived.
Both ladies improved with good food and some care after four somewhat difficult months.
While my time there had accomplished much, now I was told I must leave, to enable the lady with the healing knee to become stronger. She needed to regain her muscle strength through movement and I was doing too much for her...
I had already changed my original plans to return north in September, purchasing different $1 Megabus tickets for mid-October, after one lady had fallen again, injuring herself in August.
While biking in mid-August, I had also been injured.
The driver of a car at an intersection had not seen me on the sidewalk, biking against traffic, and had pulled directly in front of me - hitting the front wheel of my bicycle.
Unable to stop in time, my body crashed into the side of the car - going airborne from the impact of the windshield hitting me, and coming down hard on the heel of my left ankle, on top of my bicycle.
My left hand was lacerated in the accident and my left shoulder, leg and ankle were all badly bruised.
The ankle had rested for weeks before I’d tried walking any distance, but my foot was swollen and painful - not healing properly. Something internal was wrong and I needed to return to Vermont, where I could see a doctor I trusted.
I also wanted to replant my garlic seed before snow arrived.
Heading North
The day before I left Florida, one of the elderly ladies managed to fall off a chair onto the grass, outdoors.
Then I badly sliced my right index finger, while foolishly trying to cut through rock-hard orange rind. The sharp knife slipped and then I had a deep cut, bleeding away…
I was wondering if I was supposed to be leaving Florida after all. I didn’t know if I could tote my heavy luggage and computer with the swollen foot, once arriving in NYC.
And now I also had a bandaged finger. Plus there were the ladies future health to consider…
Getting to Orlando, Florida
A kind friend ferried me 2.5 hours north on Wednesday, October 16, 2019, just south of Orlando, where I stayed overnight with old family friends. I planned to catch Megabus early the next morning.
The husband of the couple I was staying with overnight took me to Kissimmee, Florida early on Thursday morning, October 17th.
It was still dark outside and the street address was exactly the same as the Orlando Megabus stop street address, but the town was wrong…we neglected to put the town and zip code in the GPS!
“We’re in the wrong location, I don’t see a bus stop!”
“I’m sorry, Elise, we’re going to miss your 7 AM bus” my host, Paul said, with a worried tone.
“Traffic is bumper-to-bumper going into Orlando and it’s already 6:40 AM! I can’t get you there in time!!”
He was very upset.
My heart fell with a thump into my stomach and I felt pretty terrible.
All this trying to go north and “road-blocks” seemed everywhere.
I had been praying hard for direction and timing…but just faced more and more difficulties!
Then a happy thought came.
In case of bad weather, like a hurricane, way back in August I’d purchased an extra $1 ticket - so I could choose to leave Atlanta on one of two consecutive days.
I had questioned myself when I bought the tickets…wasn’t I just wasting the dollar and keeping someone else from having a cheap ride? But I bought it. I could afford an extra dollar…
I didn’t know then this ticket option would help save a life!
“Calm down,” I quickly encouraged Paul.
“I have an ‘extra’ one-dollar ticket leaving Atlanta, Georgia tomorrow, so if I just buy the ticket going from Orlando to Atlanta, I can still leave - but tomorrow morning instead of today!”
This worked out, even though the ticket was now $35, purchased the day before.
Now there was a whole day to catch up with Paul and Cheryl, old family friends who have traveled the world in full-time ministry for Christ!
The next morning Paul and I arrived at the bus stop an hour early.
I boarded, beginning the long 1,300-mile journey north to NYC on Megabus, leaving Friday morning, October 18th.
My older sister hadn’t even heard of the missed Thursday bus dilemma, but I later heard she had remarked due to all the difficulties, “Doesn’t Elise get it, she’s not supposed to leave Florida?”
It sure looked like this may have been the case. So many things had to be pressed through, just to get on that bus!
I was determined to go home!
I had been searching online for work to get through the winter...and still didn't really know what I would be doing, but felt my time in Florida was completed, for now.
Being Used, Despite All My Weaknesses
There were several bus stops to pick up more passengers at different Floridian towns as we headed north into Georgia.
I decided not to get off the bus at the Tifton, Georgia, lunch and restroom stop, thinking it best to rest my swollen foot.
After eating some lunch, I tried to sleep again on the back bench of the bus.
Our bus driver announced we were now heading to our final destination, Atlanta.
But five minutes into this last leg of the Atlanta journey, I felt the bus suddenly pull over to the side of the highway and stop.
I sat up from my favorite upper-level back bench seat, wondering why, perhaps the bus had mechanical issues?
About six or eight rows in front of my upper-level seat, I saw two men standing in the bus aisle, gently slapping someone seated on the left side of the bus in the face with their hands.
They were saying, “Stay with us, Buddy, stay with us,” “Breathe, breathe!”
We all later learned a young man riding on our bus had overdosed on drugs at the Tifton, GA lunch stop, five minutes earlier.
Edward (I learned his name later), a young man seated on the other side of the aisle, had seen the breathing issue and run downstairs to tell the bus driver to pull over and call 911 - we had a medical emergency on board the bus.
This alert young man saved a life that day through his willingness to help a total stranger sitting across the bus aisle.
I stayed where I was seated and watched. I told myself that they were probably doing all they could and not to get involved.
Seconds passed, perhaps a few minutes. It didn’t look good.
Without really thinking about it, my body rose from the bench seat and I slowly went forward thinking, “maybe I can do something to help.”
The seated man stopped breathing just as I arrived behind his seat.
“He’s stopped breathing!!” one man exclaimed, “Let’s get him on the floor of the bus!”
The two men worked together to lift the man’s body onto the narrow foot-wide aisle on the top floor of the Megabus.
Before the man in trouble blacked-out, I heard him make a high, fear-filled whining sound.
The two heroic men helping him put the young man on the floor of the bus, in-between the narrow seats, and prepared to give him CPR...
Edward checked the wrist pulse of the young man not breathing, and realized the man in trouble still had a strong heartbeat!
CPR cannot be administered when someone has a strong pulse!
Edward, the young man who had seen the breathing issue and stopped the bus, now didn't know what to do. I saw him look up at the other man helping him. They gave each other a blank stare…
Bus passengers began to gather around the seats near the man on the floor. The bus driver had come upstairs and we were all waiting for the emergency medical folks to arrive.
I looked down at the floor and saw the man's face turning grey from lack of oxygen.
"He's going grey, he's GOING GREY!" I announced this loudly to the entire bus with my big voice.
I involuntarily offered aloud with authority, "He needs salt on the tip of his tongue, to stimulate the brain to breathe!"
Edward, trying desperately to save a life, responded with a question,
"Who's got salt?!" He spread his hand around, asking the entire bus.
"I have salt," I said, remembering suddenly!
I turned and ran back to my bench seat, grabbing my tiny salt bottle from my open purse, forgetting my painful foot entirely.
While eating my lunch minutes before, I had just used salt on my hard-boiled eggs. Thankfully, I didn’t have to dig around looking for it!
I ran back to the men, twisting open the top of my tiny plastic bottle full of Pink Himalayan sea salt as I went.
I shook a half-teaspoon of salt onto my hand and then dumped this in Edward’s outstretched hand.
“Just put a little on the tip of his tongue!” I said.
Edward, a total stranger to me, did exactly what I told him, putting salt on the tip of the dying man's tongue.
Then my mouth opened and I spoke again, without consciously thinking, just telling him what to do next.
"Now, pinch him here, right below the nose," I showed him, "and pinch him HARD!!"
It came out as a firm command.
Edward listened. He was on his knees at the head of the man who by now had a dark gray face from lack of oxygen.
He pinched under the man's nose, and just as he let go, the man instantly breathed in!!
Nearly everyone on the top level of the bus was now crowded around watching the drama play out, and they all gasped loudly in surprise, as he breathed, and then continued breathing!
"Oh Thank God!" I exclaimed, "Praise God!" This rang throughout the bus.
The tension in the air reduced as the grey face of the man on the floor cleared up immediately, turning pink again.
His eyes were rolled back in his head and he was totally unresponsive, but he was breathing evenly and alive!
Edward's quick response to a problem and his taking initiative to help a stranger seated near him saved a life.
And God had reminded me in the moment how to stimulate the brain using Chinese Medicine, thanks to my mom's teaching.
How bizarre is that?!!
I had used this “pinch the frenum” method once before, many years earlier, to bring my mother out of a scary low blood pressure/low blood sugar incident when she was unable to speak.
It had worked to wake her brain up then, and somehow the Holy Spirit had brought it to mind!
Edward was still on his knees on the floor at the head of the now-breathing man, checking to make sure his breathing kept going.
I put my hand on Edward’s shoulder, and told him, “You did a GREAT JOB!”
We looked around to find the unconscious man's possessions in his seat and found his cell phone.
Edward quickly handed me the man’s cell phone which was still unlocked, after pressing his mother’s number. The ill man on the floor had been texting his mother just before he stopped breathing!
“Here, talk to his mother,” Edward now instructed me. The phone was ringing.
“I am very sorry to tell you this, but your son is on the top floor of a Megabus just outside of Tifton, Georgia,” I told his mother.
“He is breathing, he wasn’t before, but he is now.”
“Call 911, call 911!!” his mother pleaded.
“They are already on their way,” I told her.
“Can you tell me his name?” I asked her. She gave it to me, and I asked her to spell it. I asked for his date of birth. Her son was twenty-nine years old.
I asked the men on the bus, “What else should I ask?”
“Allergies, ask if he has any allergies”, the man helping Edward wisely suggested. So we learned he was allergic to Prostatin, and one other drug, Penicillin, I think.
“Can you tell me anything else that could help us?” I asked his mother.
“He has a former history of drug abuse,” she said.
I thanked her and hung up. I neglected to get her name and phone number to find out later how her son was…
The young man was still comatose, but alive and breathing when the EMTs arrived several long minutes later.
They checked the man’s vitals and planned to give him a NARCAN solution and IV, after getting him off the bus on a backboard.
Moving the man took a long time, perhaps ten minutes, because of the awkward and tight situation with so many seats and a very narrow bus aisle.
His arms kept falling down because they couldn't reach around to strap them on the board.
“We had plenty of help,” the Megabus driver proudly told the State Troopers who had arrived with the Ambulance and Fire Department.
I told one of the Officers the identification information the mother had told me. The ladies downstairs shared what they had seen at the lunch stop regarding drugs put into a drink…
I also tried to tell one of the Police Officers how we got him to start breathing again, but from the look on his face, he didn’t believe me…
I called Paul and his wife to say, “Paul, I have a prayer request…and I think I was definitely on the right bus!”
My brother then told me people in opioid drug overdose situations are dying not because their heart stops, but because their breathing stops.
I’ve since learned that in NYC alone, one person dies every six hours, due to drug overdoses.
Edward's Story
Our bus finally started north again, sans one ill passenger.
I went forward and sat down next to Edward to ask his name and introduce myself.
“Do you know the meaning of your name?” I asked Edward. “No,” he shook his head.
“Well, ‘ward’ has to do with ‘warden’ and so Edward means something like, “One who Shepherds or takes care of others,” I told him.
He was so pleased to learn this!
“When I was eight years old, my mother died,” Edward told me. “And my dad went to jail around that time. So, when I graduated from high school, I didn’t have a mother or a father.”
“When I am with my friends they don’t get into any trouble,” he said. “My presence seems to help people stay out of trouble,”
I learned Edward was now twenty-five and was working at a call center in Atlanta.
After getting off the bus in Atlanta, Edward gave me a big hug.
I got in line for my next bus, leaving for Washington, D.C. and saw the young man’s luggage lying on the pavement…
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| "Summertime and the Livin' is Easy" 8x10 watercolor by Elise, 2020, Private Collection. |
The Young Man Lives!
I tried to learn later that night what happened to this young man, but HIPAA regulations wouldn't even let me learn if the man lived or died...and I hadn’t thought to write down his mom's phone number off his phone.
However, in googling his name while writing this blog, I learned only two weeks ago that he LIVES!
Thankfully, my bus schedule allowed for a three-to-four-hour layover in Atlanta.
Our Orlando bus arrived a couple hours later than scheduled, due to the emergency stop, but there was still time to catch my night bus heading north to Washington, D.C. and then transfer on to NYC.
It was a long forty-hour bus ride, but for $1 I wasn’t complaining. Megabus is a GREAT bus company!!!
I was pretty stunned the entire ride by what had happened, thinking of all which had transpired to change my initial plan, so I’d get on “the right bus”!
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
I tried to keep my swollen foot elevated during the bus ride, dragging it when walking to the bathroom, and people stared.
I looked pretty lame and it was pretty painful.
But God had used me in my weakness – with my swollen foot and my cut finger!
I learned my ankle was jammed when I arrived in Vermont. It was a full six months before the ankle pain went away but it’s back to normal now.
Even the accident in August, when the car hit my bicycle and the lady falling in August were part of my needing to go north, but in October, not September!
My garlic went into the ground just before it snowed and I harvested that bed recently. I am grateful.
How to Stimulate the Brain to Breathe
1. Use one tiny pinch of salt on the tip of the tongue
2. Pinch the Frenum HARD, with your thumb and index finger, a point just under the Nose, here:
You can hold the pinch for up to seven seconds. This point has a nerve or electrical meridian connected to the brain and will stimulate the brain, waking someone up from a low-blood pressure/low blood sugar attack. I’ve heard it can also help re-start the heart. In this case, it was used to help stimulate the Central Nervous System to tell the brain to BREATHE.
From what I can gather of anatomy, the “Philtrum” is the exterior part of the face just under the nose and above the upper lip. The FRENUM is the inner attachment you can feel under your upper lip with your tongue. You want to pinch deeply, high up underneath the nose, to catch the Frenum.
Our brain and central nervous system were designed to tell our lungs to breathe without our having to think about it.
Too often, we take the breath which gives us life for granted!
With Reverence for the Gift of Life,
I remain your friend,
Elise
"For we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord;
and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,
hath shined in our hearts,
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the excellency of the power may be of God,
and not of us.
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed;
we are perplexed, but not in despair;
Persecuted, but not forsaken;
cast down, but not destroyed;
Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
For we which live
are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake,
that the life also of Jesus
might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
So then death worketh in us, but life in you."
~ II Corinthians 4:5-12
“And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”
~ II Corinthians 12:9-10
O Worship the King
O worship the King, all glorious above,
And gratefully sing His powr and His love;
Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise.
O tell of His might, O sing of His grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space;
His chariots of wrath the deep thunder-clouds form,
And dark is His path on the wings of the storm.
Thy bountiful care what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.
Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail;
Thy mercies how tender! how firm to the end!
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer and Friend.
~ A hymn written by Robert Grant, 1779-1838
Music attributed to Johann Michael Haydn, 1737-1806
