Being a doctor is known as one of the most prestigious and honourable of all professions because a doctor has the privilege of saving human lives.
But have you heard of an engineer saving a life?
Bizarre as it may sound, an IIT Kanpur engineer actually managed to save the life of a person on a flight who was facing a life-threatening risk.
Sounds like a Hollywood adventure flick, doesn’t it?
Well, this heroic story came into light when the engineer, a first-year student of IIT Kanpur, narrated the entire incident in the annual magazine of the college, Eyes.
And that was enough for the entire world to witness how a person from a non-medical background can use his or her presence of mind and knowledge to successfully save somebody’s life.
The Entire Incident In Short
21-year old Karttikeya Mangalam was returning back from Geneva, Switzerland in February this year. While he was enjoying the solitude in flight because of its half occupancy, suddenly the flight attendant announced a medical emergency on board and enquired for a doctor who could be of help.
The patient was a 30-year old foreigner seated two rows behind Karttikeya. It came to be known that he is a Type 1 diabetes patient since age 11 and always carried his insulin pump and cartridges with him for regular doses of insulin.
But unfortunately, the man forgot to collect his insulin pump from the checking counter at the airport and then he was in dire need of another dose since his blood sugar levels had gone up tremendously. Ideally, it should be around 6 but the insulin meter he had showed it to be around 21 which was life-threatening!
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The doctor on board, another diabetes patient, revealed that the patient requires an immediate dose of the appropriate insulin without which he could have multiple organ failures or even worse, go to comatose state.
This information alone was enough to create a wave of panic among the passengers and crew alike.
All this while the IIT Kanpur engineer desperately tried to help the patient like others.
In order to save the poor man’s life, the plane started preparing itself for an emergency landing at Afghanistan. However, it would take the flight another one and a half hours to make an emergency landing which just wasn’t enough for the patient as he didn’t have time at all.
Now the issue at hand was that despite having an insulin pump, the doctor passenger was unable to inject the dosage the patient had because the cartridges the patient had were too small for the pen’s diameter.
That’s when Karttikeya, the IIT Kanpur engineer came into play.
He asked for access to the flight’s wi-fi, looked up and studied the design of that particular insulin pump the doctor had and soon realized what was missing and what it needed to perfectly work for the patient.
“It was back to first-year engineering basics in our first semester,” according to Karttikeya.
The engineer used his presence of mind and asked for a ballpoint pen from the passengers and finally after several tries, he found what he needed – a spring.
He fitted the spring into the insulin pen and gave it back to the doctor who then installed the dose inside it and injected into the patient successfully.
In 15 minutes, the blood sugar levels of the patient stabilised and he came out of danger, all thanks to the inherent presence of mind of the engineer!
All this not only tells us that if you have the willingness to help and knowledge that you can apply, then you surely do not need to be a doctor to save a life, but also proves that all the things we learn at school and college are indeed very important.
Source: Scroll, Daily Hunt, Times Now News
Images Source: Google Images
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