Emergency medical services personnel are often taken for granted - but not by those whose lives they have saved.
Union-News (Springfield, MA)
Author: GEORGE GRAHAM
NORTHAMPTON, MA – Tonight, 18-year-old Shane Scott will meet the men and women who jump-started his heart and saved his life.
Scott has no memories of the car crash that nearly took his life March 27, 1993, but he has heard stories of the quick action that Goshen and Northampton emergency personnel took to extricate him from the crumpled wreckage of his car and get his heart beating again.
“I haven’t talked to them, I haven’t thanked them,” said Scott, a Chesterfield resident who is about to graduate from Hampshire Regional High School. “I would like to give them my gratitude for what they have done.”
“I believe the initial response by these people is the reason that Shane has come out of this so well,” said Shane’s mother, Terri Scott. “Doctors tell me it’s a miracle that he is here.”
Scott will present “Save Awards” to the 10 emergency services personnel involved in his rescue and resuscitation during a slushy afternoon along Route 143 near the Chesterfield-Williamsburg town line.
The presentation will be part of the Hampshire County Emergency Medical Services Awards Night to be held at The Cooley Dickinson Hospital from 6 to 8 p.m.
In all, 46 emergency personnel from throughout Hampshire County are being credited with nine “saves” during the the period of March 1994.
A save means that the patient was resuscitated from cardiac arrest and eventually made it back to a productive life, said Linda Moriarty, executive director of the Western Massachusetts Emergency Medical Services.
Emergency medical personnel are often unsung heroes, said Moriarty.
“People tend to take emergency medical services for granted, the way they take police and fire services for granted,” said Moriarty. “This is the one week in the year that we try to make them stand out.”
Also, recognition awards will be presented to civilian Sheila Deam, who rescued a teen-age boy in March after he and a companion fell through the ice at Beaver Lake in Ware, and six University of Massachusetts Health Services workers who resuscitated the same UMass student on two separate occasions after he stopped breathing due to severe respiratory failure.
In addition, 8 Ware firefighters will receive a unit recognition award for their roles in the Ware ice rescue.
Sixty-two Hampshire County emergency personnel will receive awards.