Every day counts

David Persons revisits the emergency department that saved his life.

Panda Express® associates met kids like Kutter Shed (and his little sister) who benefited from the physical and occupational therapy suite.

David Persons and his wife Jennifer were driving past Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Taylor when David began to suffer a cardiac event.

“Jennifer was driving, thank goodness,” David says. “She looked over at me, and I wasn’t breathing. I wasn’t doing anything. I was just turning blue.”

He was suffering from symptoms similar to a heart attack and only had minutes to get help.

They pulled into the Emergency Department parking lot at the hospital in Taylor, where the staff immediately jumped into action.

“When I saw him, I just knew,” says LaTonya Williams, BSN, a nurse in the Emergency Department at Taylor. “We had to get him in the trauma room and start working on him.”

David was completely unresponsive, had no pulse and was not breathing. The staff worked for over an hour to revive him.

When the staff was finally able to stabilize David, he was transferred to another hospital for further care.

Though patients may be transferred to larger hospitals for advanced care, smaller community and rural hospitals, like Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Taylor, serve a critical role, especially when time is of the essence.

“They told me if it had taken more than 10, 15 minutes to get to a hospital, I wouldn’t have made it,” David said. “Apparently, even with just the few minutes it took to pull in and get to work on me, it still looked pretty bad for a while. They said even if they saved me, I probably wasn’t going to have much brain function or anything. Luckily, that wasn’t the case.”

Four months later, David is 80 pounds lighter and says this is the healthiest he has been for as long as he can remember. He and Jennifer returned to visit and thank the Emergency Department staff that saved his life.

“Normally, we don’t get to know what happens to patients after they leave our hospital, so this is such a gift,” Ms. Williams says. “I get so emotional because just seeing him and his recovery makes me so happy. This is why I went into nursing.”

“We talk about how life is such a gift and every day counts,” David says. “But then, life challenges us on whether we actually believe those things. Well, I certainly do now.”

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