On Wednesday morning this week, around 9:00 AM, when United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Zahir Benish had just returned home from his morning prayers, a woman, 91, suffered a cardiac arrest in the city of Karmiel in northern Israel. The woman was traveling in a taxi with her daughter when she lost consciousness. The driver stopped the car and called emergency services for help. Together the taxi driver and the daughter pulled the elderly woman out of the car and laid her down in a safe place on the side of the road.
All the nearby volunteer medical personnel were immediately notified of the emergency. Zahir ran back out the door, hopped on his ambucycle, and zoomed through the streets of Karmiel to the woman’s location. A minute later, as he was driving, Zahir received the alert from another United Hatzalah volunteer EMT, Erik Bar-El, who said that the wrong address had been given. Zahir continued driving down the street, waiting for further instructions and the correct location of the woman. Seconds later, Zahir saw an EMT performing CPR on an elderly woman on the side of the road. He jumped off his ambucycle and rushed over.
“Hashem brought me to her so that I could be a part of the team that saved her life,” Zahir said. “Everything about this incident was a total miracle, from finding her in time to the successful resuscitation.”
The first EMT was relieved when Zahir arrived and joined the effort. The frantic daughter had told the first EMT that her mother had suffered from medical issues in the past. While they were in the taxi, she started to feel pain, as if she were experiencing atrial fibrillation. A few seconds later she collapsed. Based on the woman’s age and medical history, the EMT understood the seriousness of her situation and called for additional help, including advanced life support (ALS).
The pair of EMTs carried on with CPR, attaching a defibrillator and performing compressions and artificial respiration. Additional EMTs arrived at the scene and finally a paramedic arrived in the mobile intensive care ambulance. The paramedic inserted an IV line and administered an adrenaline injection as well as other medications and fluids while the EMTs continued performing compressions. Zahir was very active at the scene, working with the other first responders and helping in any way he could. When the original oxygen tank was depleted, Zahir replaced it with a full one.
“There was amazing teamwork at the scene,” Zahir noted. “We were a team of around ten people, including both EMTs and paramedics, and worked flawlessly and seamlessly together. It didn’t matter who we were or where we were from, it only mattered that we were all working for the same goal: to restore life to the woman. We persevered, and after almost half an hour of CPR, the woman’s pulse returned. I think what pushed us to continue trying was that many of us had been at similar incidents where a person passed away and it was irreversible. We wanted to prevent that from happening here. Thankfully we succeeded.”
The team celebrated the return of the woman’s pulse and blood pressure and took her to the hospital in the ambulance for further care and recovery.