"Kid, you saved me"

Ever blow off your voicemail? I know I have. Occupational therapist Aubrey Poythress does check her voicemail daily, but she’s usually so busy that she doesn’t get to it until the end of her shift.

On. Feb. 27, though, Aubrey had a few minutes to have a quick lunch at her desk at TriStar Summit Outpatient Rehabilitation Center, and she noticed she had a phone message. It was from one of her favorite patients, 70-year-old Ron Ragland, s stroke survivor from Antioch.

“Please call me,” Ron said on the message, and Aubrey noticed he didn’t sound good.

So she called him right away, and Ron told Aubrey, “I’m not well, I’m not well,” and he said he couldn’t remember his wife’s phone number.

“I was really dizzy and feeling worse,” Ron said afterward.

Aubrey hung up and called 911 right away, telling the dispatcher Ron’s address and his symptoms. Paramedics found him in heart failure, his pulse a super low 20 beats per minutes.

“His diagnosis was a complete heart block,” Aubrey said with a sigh.

She texted Ron’s wife, who was visiting her ailing dad at a nursing home, to say an ambulance was taking Ron to the emergency room.

Ron survived and was admitted to TriStar Summit Medical Center intensive care unit, and Aubrey, 39, stopped by at the end of her shift that day to give him a hug.

Through tear-filled eyes, Ron told her: “Kid, you saved me.”

Ron went on to say he needed to buy her a steak dinner: “Nothing is good enough for what you did,” he added.

“Every day on the way to work, I say, ‘God, help me make a difference,” she said. “That was a good day. It kind of took my breath away that day.”

This news story originally published:
The Tennessean, April 8, 2024
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