On Sunday evening just after 5 PM, United Hatzalah volunteer Gilad Sharabi received an emergency alert regarding a woman, 83, who had collapsed in her home on Yisrael Yishayahu Street in Petah Tikvah. Sharabi, who was just returning home from an earlier call where he treated a man with chest pains, sped over on his motorcycle to the new address. He ran up the stairs and found the woman unconscious. Her caretaker was using a mechanical lift to take her from the bed to the floor so that she could begin CPR.
After checking for a pulse and finding none, Gilad alerted United Hatzalah’s Dispatch that he was beginning CPR and requested backup and a defibrillator.
Upon hearing the request on the radio, volunteer EMT Shlomo Avidan who was in the middle of remodeling his house nearby jumped on his ambucycle and sped over to the same location to assist Sharabi. Another EMT, Aryeh Lerner, who runs the local chapter’s equipment center and was in the middle of taking care of the inventory, also heard the request for backup, grabbed a defibrillator from a table, and rushed over to the same address. The reinforcements arrived in less than two minutes when Sharabi was already in the middle of chest compressions. They attached a defibrillator and oxygen and initiated assisted ventilation. The defibrillator did not advise a shock. The team carried on with CPR, rotating positions as needed.
Approximately 10 minutes later, an intensive care ambulance team arrived and joined the effort. The now expanded team rotated performing compressions, managing the assisted ventilation, and administering medications. Finally, about 20 minutes after Sharabi had arrived on the scene, the woman’s pulse returned. Once she was stabilized, the team took her down to the ambulance to be transported to the hospital for further care and monitoring.
After the CPR was over, Lerner spoke about his joy of having assisted in saving the woman’s life. “This has become my love, my dream. I’m a retiree, father of 11 children and 5 grandchildren, and I spend my days either in the equipment center, making sure that all the volunteers have what they need to save a life, or out responding to medical emergencies.”
Lerner, who on average responds to 180 medical emergencies each month, finds his happiness in helping others. “I feel that this is what everyone should do. We should all help each other whenever and wherever we can. Helping someone else isn’t about just responding to CPRs, or major car accidents, it means rushing out in the middle of the night to help an old woman who has fallen and needs help getting back up. To see the smile on that woman’s face, it was worth all the trouble and hassle of getting out of bed in the middle of the night or dropping whatever I’m doing in the middle of the day to go and help. This is a dream-come-true for me and it is what fills me with joy, so this is what I do. I just wish I had found this calling earlier in life.”
Sharabi, the first responder at the scene, offered a somewhat different reason as to why he makes time to respond to so many medical emergencies: “Corona has hit me hard,” he explained. “While I have always dreamed of saving lives as an EMT, I also need to work. I have my own business and try to work from home, but unfortunately, there hasn’t been much work for me lately, due to the impact of the virus.”
“Instead of staying at home worrying or complaining, I’m doing something proactive and helping others,” he continued. “It’s how I can be useful to society until my business gets going again. In the meantime, I’m happy to help others, and saving a life always gives me a lift. I can certainly use it now. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to help someone else, and keep both my dream of being an EMT and this woman alive.”