While home alone, Hagar Cain, 37, began to suffer from an acute and life-threatening asthma attack. Under great distress and nearly breathless, she managed to call MDA’s 101 hotline.
Almost unable to speak and barely breathing, Hagar could only provide the name of her kibbutz and not her address. Seconds later, a Mobile Intensive Care Unit arrived at Kibbutz Nahsholim — a community with more than 700 residents — and a search ensued to find the house.
“I answered the phone at the call center and heard a woman speaking in a choked voice and in great distress,” recalls Ronit Galula, the EMT dispatcher. “I could actually hear her last breaths before she collapsed; it was a very nerve-wracking and worrying moment.
“I knew I wouldn’t give up and wouldn’t hang up until I heard the MDA people on the other end of the line. It took a long time to find the house because she couldn’t provide us with an address.”
Without a patient name or address, paramedics Avi Cohen and Michal Skorsky and EMT Talia Sadeh began a frantic search for the correct house for several minutes. Thanks to the awareness of some of the residents, they located and broke into her house.
They found Hagar unconscious, without a pulse, lying on the floor in the bedroom. Cohen and Skorsky performed intensive resuscitation and after a few minutes managed to restore her pulse. They evacuated her to the hospital in serious but stable condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator.
A few days later, Hagar was out of danger. Shortly after, she met with the MDA medics who saved her life. “I want to say a huge thank you to the MDA team, to the angels in white, who fought for my life and did everything to save me. Thanks to them I live today.”
