Man suffering a massive heart attack saved by snowplow
Photo: Kari Campbell shared image with Menasha, WI Forum on Facebook
WILLISTON, N.D. (AP) - As a Christmas Day blizzard swept over northwest North Dakota, Henry Boone wasn't worried. He did some shoveling outside his Williston home, and then went inside to take ibuprofen for a nagging pain in his arm.
Half an hour later, the pain was gone, and Boone was celebrating the holiday with his family.
But later that night, he woke up from an early evening nap in front of the television to raging pain in his arm, back and chest.
"I was hurting so bad I started breaking out in a sweat," Boone said. "The chest pain was the worst it felt like somebody was sitting on me."
Soon he was sick, and his wife called for an ambulance, which managed to make the trip to his subdivision on Harvest Hill Drive, but paramedics had to borrow Boone's snow-blower to clear a path to load him into the vehicle.
The weather that earlier had meant little more than a blustery white Christmas was now suddenly a terrifying barrier to the life-saving medical treatment that emergency room staff at CHI St. Alexius Health in Williston almost immediately knew Boone needed.
"We stabilized him as best we could, but at that time I realized our resources were exhausted and he would not survive if we didn't get him elsewhere," said Karen Johnson, a certified registered nurse anesthetist, who tended to Boone that night.
The 45-year-old was having a massive heart attack due to double blockages, and needed to be transported to Trinity Hospital in Minot for surgery.
High winds were keeping a medical flight crew on the ground, and local ambulance drivers said the snow was piling up too high to make such a long trip possible.
By 1 a.m., after Boone's heart had stopped for a second time, Johnson made a call to Rick Sigvaldsen, Williston's Department of Transportation district maintenance supervisor.
She asked if a snowplow could escort an ambulance to Minot, and the response was immediate.
"Absolutely," he said.
With snowplow driver Ed Nelson clearing a path, an ambulance carrying Boone, a paramedic and members of the Valley Med-Flight crew made its way to Minot, where a cardiologist put a stent in Boone's heart.
The trip took four hours.
"There's absolutely no way we would have done it without the snowplow," Corey Johnson, a Williston paramedic who rode in the back with Boone, said.
The decision to call wasn't made easily, Johnson said, pointing out that she would not have asked others to travel in risky conditions if so much hadn't been at stake, the Williston Herald (http://bit.ly/2kjDsZD ) reports.
"I would never have considered calling anybody out into those conditions if it hadn't been to save someone's life," she said, adding that the response she got was not unexpected. "I was relieved, but not truly surprised because of the nature of the people in this community."
Boone, a Mississippi native, is back to work in the oil industry, and enjoying his first grandchild, who was born a month ago. The two met for the first time after Boone's discharge from the hospital.
"I can't thank them enough. If it was not for them I wouldn't be here today - the snow plow driver played just as much a part as the doctors," he said.