VENEZIA – They immediately felt that the labored breathing was the signal that the heart was bad and in a moment they intervened. We are talking about four nurses who last April 12 saved a passenger on a plane, in the middle of a flight from Venice to Paris. A chain of coincidences meant that man was saved. Without their intervention, the life of the worker, 32, would have ended in a short time. What could have turned out to be a tragedy has instead become a day that no one will ever forget. For now the identity of the man is still unknown, but surely for all his life he will thank the angels who have helped him literally in the clouds.
The episode begins on Tuesday, when the nurses Riccardo Baldo, Katia De Basi and Gina Valentino and the health worker Tiziana Cavallarin, workmates in the Cardiology department of Chioggia, get up at dawn to go to the Marco Polo airport in Venice. and embark on Easy Jet flight EJU3792. “It was a voucher that the company gave us because the original flight was to Naples, but with the pandemic it was blown” says Baldo. “We had been waiting to use it for two years and we had decided to go to Paris in the same day, starting with the flight at 6.15 and returning with the one at 21.40”.
The first coincidence is that the four are all placed in the same row, despite not having booked their seats. “It was early in the morning and we were tired. We exchanged a few words about the trip and then, as soon as we were silent, I closed my eyes. At that moment I immediately heard a labored breathing. I didn’t have time to turn around to understand where it was coming from. that my colleague Gina was already calling the gentleman sitting behind her in the window seat “.
In a matter of seconds, professionalism prevails over everything and the four stretch the man on the seats, raise his legs and begin to measure his parameters. “He had a white, sweating face and his eyes already turned back” recalls Baldo, retracing those interminable seconds. “He didn’t have a coat, but only a shirt and a tank top. Katya tore it off and we warned the staff to bring the defibrillator.” Baldo begins the heart massage, but the balcony of the seat that he gives on the corridor does not rise. The other coincidence is that at that moment a robust gentleman arrives who takes the man and lays him out on the corridor. “I continued to do the heart massage, but he didn’t recover. I whispered to Katya that he was dead and that I would continue because he was young. Inside I was afraid he wouldn’t make it, but in the end, when we were about to apply the defibrillator. , is found “.
The young man was in a daze and did not understand what had happened. The crew had already prepared the mask with oxygen. “The first thing he said was excuse me, then he thanked us” continues Baldo. Meanwhile, the stewards called the doctors to France, informing them that there was a person who had felt ill. When the plane landed, the passengers waited for the French medical staff to board and take it away for checks. Since that time the lives of the five have never crossed again.
“We continued our tour by climbing the Eiffel Tower, then we went to see the Louvre from outside, we visited Notre Dame and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and then we went back. It was an unforgettable day”.
Having told the story, they were covered by a flood of well-deserved compliments, from the general manager of the Serenissima of Venice Edgardo Contato to the president of the Veneto Region Luca Zaia, passing through friends, family and many people who thanked them for having promptly saved the life of the young man.