Photo: Facebook / Fox61
A strange incident that occurred at the end of last month is just now going viral: an EMT was having a stroke while on the job, driving the ambulance, and was only saved because his partner noticed that there was something wrong with him.
The strangest part about what happened, Chris Cabral tells Fox61, is that he literally had no idea that there was something wrong with him.
It all went down in Connecticut, on the Aetna Hartford ambulance that Cabral and his longtime partner Ray Berwick have been using on the job. Cabral was at the wheel, when Berwick started questioning him about how he was feeling.
At first, Cabral didn’t understand where his partner was coming from: he felt fine. However, Berwick had noticed a sudden drop of his mouth and what looked like inability to move his left arm. Berwick took the wheel and moved his partner to the passenger seat, and rushed him to the hospital, where his suspicion was confirmed: Cabral had suffered a stroke and had to have surgery for a blood clot near his carotid artery. That clot was blocking the blood flow to his brain and he would have died, had Berwick not paid attention – not to mention that he could have caused a serious car accident.
“He recognized something wasn’t right,” Cabral said of his partner’s quick thinking, fighting back tears. “I was inches away from dying and my partner saved my life. If I was home alone I wouldn’t have known anything was wrong. That’s the crazy part.”
Figures released by the Center for Disease Control show that stroke kills about 140,000 Americans each year. Someone in the US will experience a stroke every 40 seconds, and one person will die of a stroke every 4 minutes.
Cabral was lucky not to be included in this count, because of his partner, who also prevented a possible major car accident, had he died at the wheel of the ambulance. The EMT is now undergoing therapy and is expected to return on the ambulance come spring.
It all went down in Connecticut, on the Aetna Hartford ambulance that Cabral and his longtime partner Ray Berwick have been using on the job. Cabral was at the wheel, when Berwick started questioning him about how he was feeling.
At first, Cabral didn’t understand where his partner was coming from: he felt fine. However, Berwick had noticed a sudden drop of his mouth and what looked like inability to move his left arm. Berwick took the wheel and moved his partner to the passenger seat, and rushed him to the hospital, where his suspicion was confirmed: Cabral had suffered a stroke and had to have surgery for a blood clot near his carotid artery. That clot was blocking the blood flow to his brain and he would have died, had Berwick not paid attention – not to mention that he could have caused a serious car accident.
“He recognized something wasn’t right,” Cabral said of his partner’s quick thinking, fighting back tears. “I was inches away from dying and my partner saved my life. If I was home alone I wouldn’t have known anything was wrong. That’s the crazy part.”
Figures released by the Center for Disease Control show that stroke kills about 140,000 Americans each year. Someone in the US will experience a stroke every 40 seconds, and one person will die of a stroke every 4 minutes.
Cabral was lucky not to be included in this count, because of his partner, who also prevented a possible major car accident, had he died at the wheel of the ambulance. The EMT is now undergoing therapy and is expected to return on the ambulance come spring.
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