‘Jump in when someone needs it’: 4 Kansas City nurses save man’s life while on European vacation
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Four Kansas City nurses are back at work after a vacation they won’t forget.
At a 13,000 thousand-foot elevation inside a European cave, a man experienced a heart attack, turning their vacation into a matter of life and death.
“There wasn’t a single one of us that was trying to hold back or didn’t want to help,” Angelique Short said.
The group of Children’s Mercy Hospital nurses said they have been friends for a couple of years, but the four decided to take a foreign vacation together for the first time. What seemed like a relaxing trip took a quick turn.
“We had noticed that he was labored and sitting on the ground,” Rachel Auffert said.
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The nurses said the man just seemed tired at first. Shortly after he sat down, they heard a number of screams. Fallon Olf was the first to respond.
“I had my hand on his neck, feeling for a pulse,” Olf said. “Then I was screaming at the girls that he doesn’t have a pulse.”
Olf performed CPR on the man and he was rushed to a local hospital. After multiple surgeries, the man is alive, but still recovering. Even though the group was on vacation, during a time like that, they were in as “nurse mode.”
“We weren’t supposed to be there at that time, but really we were,” Meg Green said. “I do feel like it’s a very innate thing in you that just kicks in and you do what you’re supposed to do.”
All four nurses have returned to work but said the trip is one that put their job into perspective.
“All four of us just have that kind of heart and you just jump in when someone needs it,” Short said. “Even if we were four people behind in line we would not have been with this man and his family and I don’t think he would have had the same outcome.”
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