A 52-year-old on-call paramedic in Victoria, Australia, used his own equipment to diagnose himself with a major heart attack before driving himself to the nearest hospital. David Watson, a father of two with 25 years of experience, was working alone on a Sunday evening when he experienced 'crushing chest pain and tingles down both arms'.
Mr Watson rushed to his ambulance, hooked himself up to an electrocardiography (ECG) machine, and confirmed he was suffering a heart attack. 'Trying to save my heart muscle, I took myself in the ambulance to the hospital, and rang their doorbell and told them I had chest pain,' he said at a news conference.
He drove the ambulance 100 metres to Casterton Hospital's emergency department. He was later airlifted to Geelong Hospital, where surgeons removed a clot from a coronary artery and inserted a stent. 'I'm lucky to be alive because I was so quick to get on to it, because I was able to self-diagnose,' he told 3AW.
Mobile Intensive Care paramedic Michael Wells commended Mr Watson's 'calm thinking', saying the self-diagnosis saved his life. Mr Watson's wife, Nicole, said she never suspected a heart attack because of his fitness. Doctors have advised him to take two months off work to recover.
