Crystal Hiwalker wonders if her heart and lungs would have kept working if the ambulance crew had been able to give her a transfusion as the blood drained from her body during a stormy, 100-mile ride.
Because of the 2019 snowstorm, it took 2.5 hours to drive from her small town of Lame Deer, Montana, to the advanced trauma center in Billings.
Doctors at the Billings Clinic hospital revived Hiwalker and stopped the bleeding from her ruptured ectopic pregnancy. They were shocked that she not only survived after her heart stopped beating and she lost nearly all her blood, but that she recovered without brain damage.
During a 2019 snowstorm in her hometown of Lame Deer, Montana, Crystal Hiwalker suffered a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Her heart stopped beating and she lost nearly all her blood. During the 2.5-hour drive to the advanced trauma center in Billings, Crystal’s husband, William, helped perform CPR on her and was in the ambulance when she flatlined. “It took him a few years to recover from that,” Hiwalker says. (Jessica Plance for KFF Health News)
The Montana State Trauma Care Committee, which works to reduce trauma incidents and to improve care, later realized the ambulance that carried Hiwalker had passed near two hospitals that stocked blood. What if Hiwalker had access to that blood on her way to Billings, committee members asked.
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That realization, and question, inspired committee members to create the Montana Interfacility Blood Network, which they say is the first program of its kind in the U.S. The network allows ambulance crews to pick up blood from hospitals and transfuse it to patients on the way to the advanced care they need.
