By Paul Harasim
Las Vegas Review-Journal (Nevada)
Copyright 2007 DR Partners d/b/a Las Vegas Review-Journal
All Rights Reserved
Blood seeped from her father’s mouth as she worked frantically to breathe air into his lungs.
Jennifer Lavin was remembering that day in her parent’s bedroom when she tried to save her dad’s life.
“It’s hard,” she said, her voice so soft that she was almost whispering.
She recalled how his face kept turning a deeper blue.
And she remembered how she had her mother close the door so that her younger brother wouldn’t see his dad die in front of him.
“At first, I didn’t know whether I could continue working as an EMT (emergency medical technician),” Lavin, 22, said Tuesday as she sat inside the medical facility at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “I wondered if I could have done more. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. “
But she has worked through what happened in December 2004 so well that Dr. Dale Carrison, the medical director at the speedway, calls her an indispensable member of the medical team working this NASCAR weekend in Las Vegas.
“She has been through a lot but I think she’s grown even stronger. She’s the kind of person we’re so fortunate to have, always willing to go the extra mile to help people,” said Carrison, who is also director of emergency services at the University Medical Center. “She’s always ready to go.”
The racetrack medical staff takes care of just about every ailment that members of the NASCAR family suffer while in Las Vegas. Race spectators who fall ill also get treatment.
“Our emergency room at the track acts like practically any other emergency room,” Carrison said. “If it’s something serious, we send them to UMC.”
It was early in the morning when Lavin was awakened at home by the cries of her mother. Her father, her mother said, wouldn’t wake up in bed and he didn’t seem to be breathing.
Lavin started the emergency measures she had learned in EMT training as her mother called 911.
She couldn’t get a pulse.
“I knew in my heart he was gone, but I had to try,” she said. “There was so much blood. It felt like I worked with him for a long, long time, but in reality I know it was just minutes. Your time gets so skewed at a time like that.”
Firefighters and paramedics who arrived on the scene told her there was nothing she could have done. So did doctors.
Her father had suffered from gastrointestinal bleeding. Though he had no previous symptoms, an ulcer may have burst inside him.
“We didn’t have an autopsy done, so we’ll never know the exact cause for sure,” Lavin said.
Michael Lavin, a self-employed electrician, was 52 when he died.
As she thought about quitting work as an EMT in the wake of her father’s death, she also remembered the good days with her father. She remembered his zest for life, how he’d take her out on a motorcycle when she was a little girl.
“We’d ride all over town,” she said. “It was so much fun.”
She also remembered how he took her fishing and shared his values.
Help people when you can, he said, and be around others who also want to make the world a better place. And make sure, he said, that you do the best you can at whatever you do.
“That’s one reason why I love this job at the racetrack,” she said. “We’re 200 people who want to help others out. People like Dr. Carrison and Dr (Dave) MacIntrye (a trauma surgeon) will do all they can, just like we all do, to help people.”
In the end, what made Lavin keep on working as an EMT, and what keeps her dream alive of becoming a paramedic, she said, is her father.
“My father was so proud of me, of my helping people,” she said. “He wouldn’t have wanted me to quit. I realize now that no matter what I would have done, my father still would have died. My dad is making me work harder than ever.”