The Day Family
Patient Story: The Day Family
Reunion after 18 years
It’s not uncommon for a LifeFlight patient to reach out after their transport to express gratitude, but Megan Day has never stopped saying thank you.
Every year on her daughter Kyra’s birthday, the Vinalhaven mother of three sends a note along with a new picture of her daughter. Last October, they stopped by LifeFlight’s Bangor base to meet with LifeFlight teams and Tom Judge, who founded LifeFlight 25 years ago.
“Megan and Kyra’s story exemplifies all of what we try to do at LifeFlight everyday – to build a team effort system of emergency care,” said Tom Judge, LifeFlight of Maine Executive Director. “From the first minutes in which it was unclear if either Megan or her unborn child would survive, to graduating with honors eighteen years on, is the perfect example of how LifeFlight working together with our EMS and hospital partners impacts patients, their families, and their communities.”
Call it fate or perhaps a stroke of good luck on a bad day, but in August 2004, a LifeFlight crew was on Vinalhaven for a training exercise. Suddenly, pagers started calling every first responder on the island into service for a local medical emergency. They arrived at the Day’s where Megan, then 38 weeks pregnant with her daughter Kyra, was bleeding, losing consciousness, and using a doppler stethoscope the LifeFlight team could not find discernable blood pressure and ominously no fetal heart tones.
The LifeFlight Crew and Vinalhaven Clinic and EMS teams resuscitated Megan but she needed surgery and to deliver her child within minutes. LifeFlight transported her to Pen Bay Medical Center (PBMC) the closest hospital. In an amazing coincidence, all the obstetrics physicians were at the hospital for a celebration of babies born in the past year and met the LifeFlight team on the helipad. With a doppler stethoscope they were able to find fetal heart tones and quickly took Megan to the OR.
After resuscitation, Kyra was taken by a specialized ambulance team to Maine Medical Center’s NICU, and Megan stayed at PBMC where surgery revealed a renal-artery hemorrhage. After a second LifeFlight trip, this time to Portland, doctors saved Megan’s kidney, and mother and daughter began the road to recovery together.
Now 18, Kyra recently graduated from high school and Megan cares not just for her own family, but for many of the island’s children as the director of Vinalhaven’s only childcare center.
When asked why she continues to send LifeFlight a new photo every year, Megan said simply: “I know neither Kyra or I would be here without LifeFlight. I’ll never stop saying thank you.”
