Rescuers talk about extraordinary luck. In the case of cerebrovascular accident (CMP), popularly known as stroke, it is a race against time. In this case, the rescue really only took a few minutes thanks to the quick reaction of the driver. “I think everyone would do it this way,” said a fifty-two-year-old man from Vsetín, who has worked at the company for four years, evaluating his intervention yesterday.
“He’s a fighter, hats off to him,” Jana Černocká, co-owner of the family butcher shop, praised the employee.
Around half past five in the afternoon, Mucska still had twelve customers to deliver meat to. Among them, a sixty-six-year-old woman in a village in the Zlín region.
“I always call a few minutes before that I’m coming. But the lady didn’t care. And when I got to her house, I see lights everywhere, so I honked my horn to let them know about me. And suddenly an elderly lady ran out of the house saying that her daughter-in-law was lying upstairs,” the driver described.
Upstairs, he found a woman on the floor snoring. At first glance, it didn’t look so serious. “I didn’t know what could be wrong with her. But I thought I’d better call my wife, who is a nurse, right away. Even if it was stupidity, it’s human life after all,” he said.
When he noticed that the corner of the woman’s mouth was drooping, he called an ambulance. “I had to ask my wife for the number before. You know, from kindergarten they teach us the three notorious numbers for the fire department, the police and the ambulance, but I couldn’t remember them at all at that moment,” revealed Mucska.
With the help of the operator on the phone, he then checked whether the woman had hit her head, found a blanket in the house and placed it on her side to prevent suffocation. His intervention was so quick that rescuers arrived on the scene within a few minutes.
How to recognize a stroke. (October 2023)
“Later, the patient testified that she fell to the ground when she turned around for the phone to ring. Then she couldn’t get up. She felt paralyzed and could not speak. It was clear that the woman had suffered a stroke,” explained Gabriela Netopilová Sluštíková, spokeswoman for the regional emergency services.
But the driver’s assistance did not end there. The overweight woman had to be carried downstairs to the ambulance as quickly as possible. “Calling the fire department or the police would mean losing precious minutes waiting for their arrival. These are the most important bonus for the patient at CMP. But Robert Mucska quickly stirred up the neighbors to come help our crew. He made a significant contribution to the rapid transfer of the patient to Olomouc,” emphasized Sluštíková.
The driver spent about an hour on the spot. Surprisingly, he then got into the car and delivered the meat to the remaining eleven customers. “I hope it won’t happen to me again, but if it does, I’ll hopefully know what to do faster,” added Mucska.
Stroke is the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability in the world. The medical rescue service of the Zlín Region is one of the world leaders in the care of patients with CMP. This year, for the second time in a row, it received the highest, i.e. diamond, award from the Angeles initiative, which deals with the system of improving the care of stroke patients worldwide.
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