On Her Way Home from Vacation, Nurse Helps Two People with Low Blood Sugar Emergencies

Sometimes the right person is just in the right place at the right time to be able to help someone in need. But it’s relatively rare for such a serendipitous event to occur twice to the same person on the same day. But that’s exactly what happened to Melinda Coffman.

Melinda, a registered nurse, was on her way home to Tulsa, Oklahoma, with her family after a vacation to Cancun. The family had a layover in St. Louis, Missouri, and Melinda went to the ladies’ restroom to change her daughter’s diaper. When she arrived, she heard someone ask, “Are you okay?” and turned to see a woman trying to help another woman, who was lying on the floor with her foot sticking out from beneath the stall door.

Melinda immediately rushed over to help. “I crawled under the stall, and I found a woman who was completely unconscious and pale and clammy,” she says.

Suspecting that the woman was suffering from low blood sugar, Melinda asked others in the restroom to call 911 and get juice for the woman. She had her stable and talking by the time the paramedics arrived half an hour later.

“It’s something that any nurse would have done,” says Melinda.

Thinking she was done with her nurse duties for the day, Melinda boarded her flight home with her husband, Coy, and their two children. But shortly after the plane took off, another hypoglycemia emergency occurred.

“As soon as we take off, there’s a passenger in the front seat, and the passenger tells the flight attendant, ‘I think I have low blood sugar,'” Melinda recalls.

The flight attendant gave the passenger a soda and snacks and made an announcement requesting that any nurses or doctors on the flight come to the front of the plane.

Melinda answered the call and moved a few rows forward to sit with the ailing passenger. This time she didn’t have to do much, but she was there to make sure the person was alert and feeling well for the remainder of the flight, which was about 20 minutes.

“The flight attendant did a fantastic job of managing,” says Melinda.

She asked the Southwest flight crew to make sure paramedics were on the ground when they landed, and the passenger remained stable and was given medical care upon arrival.

Now the Coffman family is back at home safe and sound, with photos of their Cancun vacation up on their fridge. The trip was unforgettable, but the journey home was truly something unique.

Melinda says the takeaway from this story is that it’s important to ask for help. She herself asked for help from others to get juice and put in a call to 911 during the first medical emergency. She even trusted a stranger to bring her daughter back to her husband while she focused on the woman who had passed out in the bathroom.

Whether you’re having a medical emergency or just happen to be around to witness one, she says it’s vital to get others involved so that situations like these can be resolved quickly and safely.