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Because of the storm, the victim was putting up his last piece of sheetrock for the day when he was struck by lightning and caught fire. But it was by chance that Kenney was there that afternoon — usually, she was in another building. “I think of him every day,” she says. “If it’s my family, I hope someone else will have the strength and courage to step forward.”

‘You don’t abandon patients 85’

“I was always so grateful to older RNs for their support and letting me be where the action was,” says Evelyn Personeus, RN, LMT, a psychiatric nurse at Bergen Regional Medical Center, Paramus, N.J.

Just after midnight on June 10, 2002, the action took the form of a sports car that awoke her when it crashed in front of her home. “I recognized that deep boom, so I called 911, then ran to the scene,” she says. “The driver was OK, but flipping out in shock, so I had to calm him before helping the passenger.”

She couldn’t open the door, but climbed through a broken window and squatted on the driver’s seat to minimize cuts from shattered glass. “The car was crushed and the rear was wedged on a pole,” she says. “A transformer was at the top. I thanked God for its light — and that the transformer didn’t fall.’’

As soon as she got into the car, Personeus saw fire flickering in the engine and a 19-year-old boy pinned under the dash. “I couldn’t release the seat belt because the impact broke the back of the seat; it shifted, and he was shoved backward,” she says.

“His head was hyperextended, he was gurgling blood, and it was pouring out of his ears, mouth, and nose. I couldn’t leave this kid because if I did, he’d die. A strange peace came over me. He was in my hands.”

As neighbors tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire, Personeus provided sternal rubs. “It looked like his neck was broken, so I couldn’t do any worse if I picked up his head to breathe,” she says. “I could hear blood deep in his chest, so I kept his head up the whole time. I wouldn’t let him go or get out myself. You don’t abandon patients, and he was my patient, somebody’s beautiful baby, and a good boy with a seat belt on. If he died, someone would be holding him during his last minutes.”

When police arrived and ordered her out of the burning car before it exploded, Personeus, afraid he’d drown, refused to go or let go of the boy’s head until officers extricated him. They all made it out just before the interior caught fire.

Days later, visiting the boy in the ICU, Personeus discovered his father was a high school classmate.

“Eric had a long row to hoe, but he got his life back,” Personeus says. “I would do it again. There’s a proverb that if you know what to do when it’s needed, woe to you if you don’t. This is what I went to nursing school for, and I stepped in because I’m a nurse. I’m so thankful I have the knowledge and experience that kicks in during crises.”

An angel?

Theresa Miklusicak, RN, BS, was driving her new SUV on the highway when she glimpsed a family passing her in a black vehicle. Moments later, she saw it fly across three lanes of traffic and land off the right shoulder.

She slammed on her brakes and pulled across one lane so she could park in the median. Telling her daughter to stay put, she ran across the highway to help, and when she got to the hatchback, a little boy scrambled into her arms.

“From the way he held it, I knew he had a broken tibia and probably ankle, as well as cuts on his face, head, and arms,” says Miklusicak, outpatient surgery staff nurse at Battle Creek (Mich.) Health System. “There were about 30 bystanders, but nobody would go the 90 feet down the hill. I screamed, ‘Please, please help, there are others. I can’t let them die,’ and one lady came down and took the boy. I told her to keep him warm and comforted, then knelt under the hatch to get out the others. I heard moaning, but couldn’t see through the black smoke.”

She extricated a little girl with significant head trauma and an injured arm. Again, bystanders wouldn’t make eye contact until she carried the child up the embankment and found a woman to help. She repeated the process with the cold, shaken mother, who didn’t speak English or Spanish.

And finally, she helped an adult man crawl through the hatch. “He had a jumbo forehead laceration spewing blood, so I held it for him,” she says. “I was covered in blood but didn’t think about pathogens, just did what needed to be done. I kept him standing within six feet of the vehicle while immobilizing his cervical spine by cupping the back of his neck and thrusting his jaw forward. He was at least three inches taller than me, so my arms tired. I yelled I could do much better with something absorbent and asked for T-shirts, napkins, or tissues, but nobody brought anything until a trooper came down with a first-aid kit. Finally, a bystander helped me bandage him, and I moved him up the hill. I got everyone to the ambulance and gave report.”

The paramedics later said every injury she identified was accurate. Witnesses said she’d saved the family’s lives. The little boy asked if she was an angel. But her own daughter said, “That’s what my mom does. She saves people.”

Miklusicak now keeps a mask in the door pocket and surgical gloves in her first-aid kit. “I can’t grow a garden to save my life, but I can save lives,” she says. “Deep down, nursing and nurturing are ingrained. I don’t know how I kept it together, but I did what I was trained to do. I’d do it again, but I learned to shut my ignition off next time.”

Sole salvation

When a three-vehicle, high-speed Marine convoy crashed in an Iraqi desert dust storm on Easter Sunday in 2003, the collision injured 13 Marines and ejected three from their Humvees. The most severely injured was the Navy corpsman, who was thrown 30 yards. They thought he was their sole source of medical care.

Others, restrained by their lap belts, also sustained serious injuries. Among them was the unit’s historian and personnel/administrative chief, Staff Sgt. Charles Peworski. His left arm was numb, he was dazed from hitting the windshield, and his knees had slammed into the dashboard. But Peworski had something else, courtesy of the GI Bill: a BSN.

As soon as he got out to secure the vehicle and establish a safe area, “I was no longer a historian — I was a nurse,” Peworski says. Working with Staff Sgt. Joel Oyama, another Marine who was also a nurse, the two started triage, assessing the injured for external and internal injuries.

The medical corpsman was in shock with multiple head and neck injuries and fractures of the hand and knee. Another soldier had severe facial trauma. Peworski used the field first-aid kit and provided nursing care. Working one-handed, he established three IVs, applied pressure dressings, treated soldiers for shock, monitored vital signs, and stabilized fractures and other injuries.

“It seemed like hours, but it was probably 30 minutes before some medics arrived and helicopters came to Medevac the most severely injured,” Peworski says. “I didn’t really notice my injuries until the end. My only thought was that we had Marines down.”

Despite extensive soft tissue damage that may include permanent nerve damage to his hand, Peworski returned to his battalion for 10 days of light duty before resuming his duties completely. He returned to the United States for active duty. A week later, he was back at his civilian job as RN house nursing supervisor at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix.

Although he had finished his eight-year military contract with stints in Kuwait and El Salvador and now could go to inactive status, Peworski did not. In July, he returned to active duty to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure.

“Like nursing, it’s rewarding, just in different ways,” says Peworski, who also received the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. “I enjoy helping people.”’

Judging

Entries were judged by nurse leaders affiliated with the American Red Cross and/or Nursing Spectrum, based on narratives of the event and letters of nomination and validation. Nominees met criteria including the following: the nominee saved or attempted to save a life under adverse circumstances and outside his or her defined work duties; it occurred between May 2, 2002, and May 2, 2004; and he or she must have been licensed as an RN or LPN at the time in any state or territory under U.S. jurisdiction. Nominators did not have to be nurses or affiliated with the American Red Cross or Nursing Spectrum.

Wendy Bonifazi, RN, APR, CLS, is a senior staff writer for Nursing Spectrum.