Not everyone gets the opportunity to save someone’s life and that is one of the many reasons why healers and doctors are considered living Gods. Although their profession is the most respected, sometimes they have to go through unexpected circumstances to save a life and an incident that happened on an aeroplane is going to make you respect them even more.
The entire incident happened on an aircraft en route New York from Guangzhou, China, reported NY Post. An elderly passenger reportedly fell ill mid-flight on a ‘China Southern Airways’ flight when the plane was six hours away from its destination.
The pensioner was in terrible pain due to his bloated stomach and was sweating profusely at around 1 a.m. When the cabin crew made an emergency announcement looking for a doctor on board, Dr Zhang Hong came forward to help. Head of vascular surgery at Jinan University’s First Affiliated Hospital, Dr Hong was quick to identify the problem.
“When I saw that the man could hardly bear the pain anymore, my only thought was how to get the urine out of his bladder. He was going into shock and may have suffered a risk to his life if we didn’t tend to him urgently,” Dr Hong told the South China Morning Post.
Dr Hong was also informed by the relatives of the patient that the sick man had a history of prostate enlargement. That is when Dr Hong suspected that it was causing urinary retention in him. “The man’s bladder was so bloated with urine, it was at risk of rupture,” said Dr Hong.
The doctor saved the man’s life by sucking about a litre of urine from his swollen belly. When he realised that the syringe’s needle won’t be any good in pumping the urine out, he decided to use his mouth to extract the urine. Dr Hong spent 37 minutes sucking urine with the help of a piece of plastic tubing, straws from a milk carton, sticky tape and a syringe from the plane’s medical kit.
It might appear icky to us but that’s what doctors sometimes have to go through to save a life. “Saving lives is a doctor’s instinct. There was no other way. I didn’t think much about it,” he said.
Hats off to you Dr Hong!