Last Thursday morning in Kiryat Ata, United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Yechezkel Solomons was getting ready to bring home his wife and new baby boy from the hospital. He went out for the morning prayers and just as he was finished and about to leave the synagogue to drive to the hospital, fellow United Hatzalah volunteer Yechiel Chingell called out to him: “Yechezkel! There’s an emergency CPR on a child in progress on Pinsker Street!”
Sharing a momentary, knowing glance, the pair ran outside to their respective cars and drove to the nearby location. They ran into the apartment and joined fellow United Hatzalah EMTs Naftali Rottenberg and Tzemach Elias in administering CPR on a nine-year-old girl who had been found unresponsive in her bed. Another EMT, Shoshana Guttman, who lives in the building, came back from doing errands and rushed in a step behind Yechiel end Yehezkel.
Working in synchronicity, the team of first responders attached defibrillator pads to the young girl’s chest and back, and then alternated between chest compressions and artificial ventilation. The defibrillator did not advise a shock.
The team worked tirelessly to bring back the girl’s pulse. Ten minutes later, a mobile intensive care ambulance arrived just as the United Hatzalah volunteers had brought her pulse back. Shoshana, who knows the family, went over to comfort the terrified parents and as the girl was prepped for transport and was taken to the hospital, her mother joined her in the ambulance. Shoshana drove the distraught father in her own car to the hospital.
A few hours later, after bringing home the latest addition to his family, Yechezkel received an update from the hospital that the girl’s condition was stable. The doctors had determined that the child had haplessly found and overdosed on a relative’s prescription painkillers.
Fortunately, the United Hatzalah team had arrived quickly and started CPR before it was too late. As he held his newborn son, Yechezkel reflected on a momentous morning and was grateful that the rapid response that he and his United Hatzalah colleagues had administered had successfully saved the young girl’s life and kept her family whole.
The next morning, the girl woke up. She was discharged from the hospital on Sunday and came back home in full health. The volunteers went to pay a visit to the girl they saved at the behest of the family to give the family a chance to say thank you.