This isn’t a tale of heroics. It’s a story about luck, timing, and the kind of science that can turn death itself on its heels.
In 1968, Uncle Sam decided I should wear an Army uniform. I was soon trained as a light weapons infantryman and given orders to report to the First Air Cavalry in Vietnam. Then fate intervened. Through some bureaucratic twist, one of those “Army miracles,” I was rerouted into on-the-job training as a medical corpsman. That, I quickly learned, was the best job in the Army.
I was stationed in Germany. Determined not to wind up hauling trash or scrubbing latrines, I buried myself in medical study. Soon I was assigned to the treatment and surgery room at the largest dispensary in the country, a place where everything from major trauma to childbirth emergencies rolled through the doors.
Through a small comedy of errors, nobody realized I wasn’t formally trained. Had they known, they would have shipped me to an ambulance crew. Instead, I found myself standing under the fluorescent lights of that treatment and surgery room when panic burst through the door.
A frantic couple rushed in, clutching a tiny girl. She was maybe five years old, gasping like a fish on dry land, her face was the color of a Smurf. Severe asthma. She had minutes, maybe seconds.
I shouted for the doctor, sprinted to the crash cart, and filled a syringe with half a cubic centimeter of epinephrine. As I turned, Dr. Anthony Esposito barked, “Corpsman, point five Epi, stat!”
I held out the already prepared syringe. He waved me off. “You do it. Intramuscular.”
I froze fora second. I had never given an injection in my life. My hands trembled as I looked at her tiny arm, too frail, too small. Then I saw her thigh, more meat, a better shot. I steadied myself, aimed, and injected.
Seconds passed like hours. Then, coughing. Gasping. A cry. Color flushed back into her cheeks, her little body shaking with life. The room erupted in relief. Her parents sobbed. Dr. Esposito smiled. And I stood there, staring at that little girl, realizing I had just witnessed a miracle of medicine.
Only sixty-five years earlier, scientists had discovered epinephrine and its power to stop deadly asthma attacks cold. That day, it saved a life before my eyes.
The experience changed me forever. I wanted to pursue medicine, but money stood in the way. There were no paramedic programs in 1970 when I got out. I was accepted to three nursing schools but couldn’t afford to give up my police job, which paid more than nursing ever would back then.
Still, every time I hear the word “epinephrine,” I remember that little girl, her blue skin turning pink, her parents’ tears, and a young Army corpsman who got one shot and didn’t miss.
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