By Joe Depriest
Charlotte Observer
Copyright 2008 Charlotte Observer
LINCOLN COUNTY, N.C. — Paramedic Ken Morrison doesn’t remember the night he almost died.
But he’s pieced together from others what happened on Jan. 25 at the Lincoln County Rescue Squad.
He was a few days shy of 40, eating too many cheeseburgers, but in pretty good shape otherwise.
Off duty from his job as a county paramedic, Morrison was rescue squad captain. It was the same unit in which his mother had been the first female member in 1975. Lately, she’d cautioned him about spending so much time volunteering at the squad. Back off a little, she said. Relax.
But the rescue squad was in Morrison’s blood. He gave it 100 percent, including the job of training young folks for the junior rescue squad.
The young folks had ridden along on emergency calls with crews before. They’d witnessed real life-and-death situations. But that was all preparation. The true test of what they’d learned came on Jan. 25 when they saved Morrison’s life at squad headquarters after he’d gone into cardiac arrest.
I recently met Morrison at Carolinas Rehabilitation Mount Holly, where he’d been a patient for about a week. He was making steady progress and felt good enough to talk with reporters about his experience. His wife, Lisa, was there, along with his parents, Bryan and Penny.
Sitting with Morrison at a table fronting TV cameras and media folks were Ethan Parker, 17, and Dereck Sherrill, 20. They’d started CPR on Morrison after they and other junior members had found him slumped in his desk chair with his lips and face turning blue -- the oxygen cut off to his brain.
“The training kicked in,” Parker said. “I was thinking: I gotta get this and that done.”
Only later did the gravity of the situation sink in. And it hit hard. “I was pretty shook up,” Parker said.
The shock waves will ripple in all their lives for a long time to come.
Morrison listened intently as the teens talked. I watched his face as more pieces of what happened that night came together for him.
When he spoke, you knew it came from the heart.
“I trained these guys right,” Morrison said. “It’s an overwhelming feeling to know they saved my life.”
A fighter
You feel fine. You’re hardly ever sick. Then, from out of nowhere, you’re down and fighting for life.Medical Director Matthew Shall at Carolinas Rehabilitation Mount Holly reminded me that it can happen to anybody. An 80-year-old smokes and drinks and eats all the wrong things and never has a health problem. But a 40-year-old marathoner and vegetarian drops dead in the middle of training.
You can’t ever tell.
Morrison had no warning. But he was in the right place for a medical crisis: the rescue organization where he was a dedicated volunteer.
That mindset probably came from his parents. Both were trained as emergency medical technicians in the 1970s. The reason, Penny Morrison said, was to help others and make a difference.
She’d decided to join the Lincoln County Rescue Squad when it was still an all-male organization.
“I had to fight my way in,” said Penny Morrison, 59. “A lot of men didn’t feel like women should be a part of the squad.”
The first emergency call she went on was a fatal wreck. Penny Morrison proved she could handle the job.
His mom’s rescue work influenced Morrison. He wound up as a paid paramedic, who felt duty-bound to volunteer with the rescue squad.
Folks in emergency services look after each other. Penny Morrison told me about the support volunteers from Lincoln and counties all over the state showed during her son’s hospital stay. They drove her and her husband to Carolinas Medical Center and were always around when needed.
A nightmare, a roller coaster ride: that’s how she described the experience. Ken Morrison was alive, but doctors had little hope. They prepared his family for the worst.
Penny Morrison recalled one doctor said that only one in 10 patients who’d been through the same thing walked out of the hospital.
“He told me, `I don’t think your son will be that one,’ ” she said. “I told him, `You don’t know my son. He’s strong. He’ll fight.’ ”
She was right. The next day, Ken Morrison turned his head in the hospital bed and opened his eyes.
“That’s what we were waiting on,” Penny Morrison said. “To see life back in him.”
Scaling back
Ken Morrison is home now. He’s taking outpatient therapy at Carolinas Medical Center-Lincoln and making steady improvement in his speech and mobility.
His appetite is growing, but the diet has changed. From now on, he’ll try to avoid cheeseburgers and other fried foods. He’s also taking medication for high cholesterol.
And there’s another change. Morrison’s mother recently drove him by the rescue squad and he made up his mind to scale back on the time he spends there.
It won’t be easy. The squad has always been like a family to Morrison and even more so now. The junior squad members are calling Penny Morrison “mom” and Bryan Morrison “paw-paw.”
I don’t think Ken Morrison will have trouble finding the right balance when he returns to the squad. The experience has made him stronger. I hope he can broaden the emergency training program and get it into area schools. As the survivor of a life-and-death struggle, he’s probably an even better teacher for young people learning skills to use on the front lines of rescue.