Different stories, same lesson

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/11/2010 (5622 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This week, amid all the usual griping and sniping, two stories crossed my desk that reminded me again we don’t hear enough about what goes on in that world beyond the grim headlines and political posturing.

These are two stories — one with a happy ending, the other not — that should remind us all what it’s really all about. Starting with the happy one.

— — —

Philip Thompson has attended almost every Winnipeg Blue Bomber home game since 1963, first as a member of the Hudson’s Bay Junior Quarterback Club, then as an usher and ultimately as a season ticket-holder. Over the years, he’s sat near ground level and in the last row of the upper deck. But more recently, Philip, his brother Dan and their friend Keith Groome have been making the long and winding ramp-climb to Section 3, Row 9.

So it was that two weeks ago, while making that ascent, Philip felt what he would later describe as “some breathing discomfort.”

He slowed his pace, but trudged on, not imagining the last Bomber home game of the season would threaten to turn into his last game ever.

Much less he would be writing a newspaper columnist about what happened next and asking for a favour.

— — —

“Mr. Sinclair:

“I am hoping you can help me as I try to discover the identity of a Good Samaritan who came to my rescue anonymously, and I have not had the opportunity to thank.

“At the last Bomber game on Nov. 5, while sitting in my seat in the west side upper deck waiting for the player introductions, I suffered a heart attack with little warning.

“I have no memory of the event, but, apparently in mid-sentence, I slumped back in my seat and my heart stopped completely. My quick-thinking seatmates transferred me into the aisle where a Good Samaritan from a nearby seat leapt into action performing CPR relentlessly in spite of the lack of a pulse for over 10 minutes, the time it took the paramedics and their equipment to be summoned from field level.

“On the way to Health Sciences Centre in the ambulance, the paramedics told me until they administered the electric shock there was no cardiac activity whatsoever. This heroic, yet unknown individual, no doubt saved my life and whatever marbles I am left with. I am left with other things as well. Among them, a new-found appreciation for our health-care system.

“To me the sequence of events was amazing: Heart attack at 7 p.m. Friday, angioplasty completed at St. Boniface General Hospital before noon Saturday, home from the hospital Wednesday evening after a myriad of other tests and procedures. And never a worry about being able to afford the care.

“The coronary care unit at HSC is a wonderful new facility, as is the cardiac OR at St. Boniface General Hospital. The people at both facilities were wonderful and caring.

“I am also left with a determination to learn CPR and encourage my friends and family to do so as well.

“I know I am lucky to be alive as I heard from the paramedic service there was another heart-attack victim at that same Bomber game who did not leave the stadium alive. Perhaps he was not so lucky as to have a Good Samaritan sitting nearby.

“Mr. Sinclair, if you can find out who did this great service for me I would dearly like to thank him. If he prefers to remain anonymous, perhaps you could give him my phone number. Maybe it will be enough for him to hear that his good work was not in vain…

— — —

As I was saying, the second story doesn’t end as happily as the first.

Kaleena Hudon died Wednesday.

A year ago, wrote I about the beautiful young mother who found the melanoma that had first been diagnosed four years earlier, when she was 21, had spread throughout her body.

This, just after her daughter Hailey was born. Kaleena’s determination to live as long as she could for her baby girl — and her mother-in-law’s request for help getting her to treatment at a health-care facility in Pittsburgh — became the focus of a blog written by both Kaleena and her husband Dave.

When I Googled her name Friday, I found the latest entry posted by her husband that announced her death and the trust fund that’s being established for 18-month-old Hailey.

Immediately below that was another entry from Kaleena, posted in March.

It began: “Yes I’m still here!”

A wake for Kaleena will be held Monday at the Transcona Country Club from 3 to 7 p.m.

Kaleena was only 26.

— — —

There was more to that letter Philip Thompson wrote looking for Mr. Good Samaritan. It ended with these words:

“I am 58 years old, the same age at which my father had his heart attack. I have a daughter who is getting married next summer, I have grandchildren I want to watch grow up.

“I have too many things to live for.

“I am left with a new-found appreciation for the fragility of life and the importance of friends and family, things I may have taken for granted before, but I will not from now on.”

And you, my dear readers?

What about you?

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca