Tenderly Pruett was at a restaurant in Crestville Hills, Kentucky when the unthinkable happened. The woman who was about to be married suddenly collapsed and stopped breathing. She had no pulse.
It was a stroke of luck that inside the same restaurant were nurses from St. Elizabeth Healthcare.
Jami Sears and Lee Ann Burk saw what happened to Tenderly and without a second thought, the two women jumped up from their seats to help the woman. Tracie Schack, their nurse manager, happened to be with them that day, and she promptly did CPR on Tenderly.
Their training in CPR was put to the test.
The three nurses quickly determined that Tenderly was not breathing. The first thing they did was what they know best as healthcare workers: CPR.
“There’s so much adrenaline, you just jump in and start doing things,” Jami told WCPO 9. “You don’t even remember where those things came from, they’re just there.”
The women are used to treating patients in the hospital, which is why doing it at a restaurant was a bit of a difficulty.
“In the hospital, when you have emergency, you call a code and you have a whole team that comes in,” Lee Ann said.
But at that moment, the women had no hospital tools on hand and had to work with each other despite the lack of equipment.
They took turns in doing rounds of compressions on Tenderly, keeping her alive until first responders finally came.
These nurses are also used to handling patients and thinking on their feet at the same time. While the others were working on Tenderly, one of them called her daughter, Natasha Burns, to inform her of what happened to her mom.
They found Natasha’s name on Tenderly’s phone, in the contacts list in “Emergency SOS” settings. The woman could not imagine what would have happened to her mother if the nurses were not there at the same restaurant where she collapsed.
Tenderly was lucky that the nurses were still at the restaurant when she fell.
Jami shares how everything happened at the perfect time.
“I mean if it would have been two minutes later, Lee Ann and I were walking out the door,” she explained to WCPO 9.
Tenderly was sent to the hospital in time and has been recovering with her daughter by her side. Natasha is quite grateful for the presence of Jami, Tracie, and Lee Ann when her mother collapsed.
“I’m very grateful for everything that everyone’s done so she can be here today,” Natasha said. “Being able to hear her voice again, which I never thought I was going to be able to, was the most amazing thing.”
Weeks later, Natasha visited the women at the healthcare center to give them hugs filled with so much gratitude.
For Tracie, it is moments like these that the nurses are quite thankful for the profession they have chosen. With compassion, kindness, and concern for life, these women have made way for the survival and recovery of another.
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