The packed flight taking travelers from Nashville to San Diego started off quite
ordinarily that day in late July.
Ron Childress, an unassuming and dedicated nurse supervisor at the Vanderbilt
Clinic in Brentwood, relishes his summer vacations to a new destination each
year. After eight months of planning, Ron and his family boarded Southwest
Flight 914 for their trip to sunny San Diego. About an hour after take-off Ron
was seriously considering popping in a movie on his laptop when he heard the
overhead announcement: Is there a passenger with medical experience that could
please come to the front of the plane?
“On such a packed flight, I was sure there was someone else who could help, so I
didn’t respond at first,” said Childress. A second request came soon after, and he headed directly to the
front of the plane. He soon saw a woman in her mid 40s laying face up on the
floor, surrounded by flight attendants. That’s when his heart started pounding, and he knew that this woman was in need of
some medical help.
Childress moved to her side and tried to talk to her, but she didn’t respond. “I checked her pulse and was concerned because it was 26, so I started CPR,” he said. After the series of chest compressions and breaths, the woman’s pulse increased to about 40—better, but not good enough.
He remained bent down beside the woman continuing CPR. Soon he was equipped with
headphones connecting him by the cockpit radio to a physician with Southwest
Airlines—the two quickly worked together to get IV saline into the woman.
“The physician asked me if I knew how to insert IVs, and I told him I’ve done that hundreds of times,” Childress said. “Then I saw the IVs in the plane’s medical kit were 16 and 18 gauge, much larger than I regularly use, and the
woman’s vein in her hand was tiny.”
He kept praying to himself, “Please Lord, help me get through this. Give me the strength I need and help this
woman recover.”
He inserted the IV on the first try. The woman improved and eventually gained
consciousness, but was still not stable.
“We were about two and half hours from landing in San Diego at that point,” said Childress. “I wasn’t sure she was going to live and certainly knew we couldn’t wait until San Diego.”
He told the flight attendants that the plane needed to land at the closest
airport so the patient could get additional help. A few minutes later, an
overhead announcement informed the plane full of passengers that the plane was
going to make an emergency landing in New Mexico.
Childress stayed with the woman, making sure the fluids continued to do their
job, and he also comforted her by keeping her engaged in conversation until the
plane could be re-routed. He learned the woman had been dealing with heart
issues and her family physician had encouraged her to get a stress test.
As the flight attendants prepared the passengers for landing, he was offered a
belted seat with the flight attendants. Instead, he stayed unbuckled, knelt
next to the ill and frightened woman.
“I wasn’t going to leave her,” Childress said.
As soon as the plane landed, the ground ambulance took the woman off the plane.
Thankfully, she did survive and eventually had open-heart surgery.
Childress was shaken and exhausted when the plane headed to San Diego. The
flight crew showed their appreciation with continuous soda service and even
buying Childress and his family dinner in San Diego. Southwest provided him
with free roundtrip tickets as well, but, that’s not why he answered the call.
“It was scary, and it’s not something I ever wanted to do, but I kept thinking about my own family,” he said. “If one of my family members was lying outside the cockpit of a plane, I would
hope somebody would get up and help them, too.”
