Daytona Beach, FL – A Volusia County Fire Services paramedic on vacation with his family ends up in the right place at the right time to help a fellow vacationer get through an in-flight medical issue.
Eric Middlebrook – a 48-year-old former medic in the United States Army – and his family got back to the Daytona Beach area early Wednesday morning, nearly 7 hours after they were supposed to due in part to that medical issue forcing the pilot of that Delta plane to do an emergency landing in North Dakota.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning, Middlebrook said the man suffering that medical issue was a fellow passenger he saw off-and-on for the past 2 weeks while Middlebrook, his wife, and 2 sons wrapped up an Alaskan cruise.
The Boeing 757 plane departed at 11pm Alaskan time on Monday, but it was about 2 and a half hours into the flight – while the plane was cruising over Canada on its way to Minneapolis – that Middlebrook noticed flight attendants breaking out medical gear.
“I asked [a flight attendant] ‘Is there a medical emergency?’ and she’s like ‘Yeah, there’s a gentleman up front who’s experiencing shortness of breath, chest pressure, abdominal pressure, and he’s anxious.'”
After he and a registered nurse who was also a passenger on the flight examined the man, Middlebrook said he couldn’t rule out the possibility that the man was having a heart attack. That’s when the pilot decided to land in Bismarck, where other paramedics took the man off the plane in a wheelchair and transported him to a nearby hospital.
Middlebrook says he hasn’t heard an update on the man’s condition but planned to get one from his wife at some point this week.
This isn’t the first time this has happened to Middlebrook. He says he was on another Delta flight from California to Atlanta over 3 years ago when he helped another man who appeared to be having a heart attack in-flight. That plane ended up landing in Salt Lake City so he could get treatment.
“People in our line of work – be it law enforcement or in the medical community or in EMS – they’re a little more attuned,” Middlebrook said. “I think a lot of people in this career field would step up and do the right thing to help out their other citizens.”
Middlebrook is a 12-year VCFS member who works out of Station 11 on Derbyshire Road near Holly Hill.
Photos of Middlebrook above (in light blue shirt) and below are courtesy of the Volusia County Professional Firefighters Association.
Copyright 2015 Southern Stone Communications.