Remote area Nurse, Ryan Franks, has always loved trying new things and visiting new places. Throughout his diverse nursing career, he’s worked on mines, power stations, ski fields and within a range of incredibly remote and fascinating communities across Australia, New Zealand and overseas. But throughout his life's adventures, Ryan has always been drawn to locations with a good dose of 'Vitamin Sea" - those remote locations that also boast plenty of warm weather, beaches and sunshine. Which is how, in 2017, Ryan found himself back working as the only nurse and on duty health practitioner, in the stunning but extremely remote community of WA's Coral Bay. As well as being the main go-to on 'all things health' in the Coral Bay community, Ryan was also highly experienced in dealing with any emergency that came his way and treating his regional patients with whatever they required, until further assistance arrived. So, when the then 44-year-old nurse started feeling the undeniable and completely unexpected symptoms of his own heart attack, he immediately knew what he had to do. Despite being in terrible pain and knowing he could die at any moment, Ryan took himself back to work from his nearby home, hooked himself up to the ECG machine and dialed in to the Emergency Telehealth Service (ETS) based in Perth, as well as calling his local St John Ambulance volunteers to support him.
In episode #117 of the Flying Doctor podcast, Ryan recalls that with no Doctor or nurse on duty at the closest hospital at Exmouth, he quickly realised he was 'on his own and possibly about to die'. Ryan said his years of experience in emergency and remote nursing helped him stay calm and focused as he performed his own ECG, connected himself to WA's Emergency Telehealth Service (ETS) before directing the recently arrived St John ambulance volunteers on how to administer life-saving drugs and CPR, should his heart stop. After ETS Dr Beatrice Scicchitano began interpreting his ECG results from her base in Perth, Ryan realised just how serious his situation was. Ryan had a blood clot in his heart – and he knew it had the very real potential to kill him. He was also in terrible pain and he could feel himself rapidly getting sicker and more physically distressed. With the RFDS now on its way to help him, Ryan was faced with the very real possibility that his heart could stop at any moment. But he also told himself that if this 'WAS it', Coral Bay was not a bad place to die.
Ryan would need to draw on his two decades of remote medical training to successfully insert his own canula and then draw up the life-saving drugs he would need to administer - to himself - to bust the blood clot. In an incredibly rare, 'self-administered' thrombolysis procedure, Ryan injected himself with clot-busting drugs to clear the clot and return normal blood flow to his heart. Thanks to the ETS service and the St John's ambulance first responders who came to his aid, Ryan was successfully able to administer this life-saving medication within 40 minutes of his initial heart attack symptoms. Just a few hours later, a now stabilised and much happier Ryan was collected by the Royal Flying Doctor Service and transferred to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, where he would later have a stent put into his heart. But when Ryan recalls the moment he looked out over Coral Bay from his stretcher bed and the RFDS plane's window, the enormity of his experience is still evident in his voice and his 'love for life' today. Some seven years on, Ryan is back working as a nurse in Newcastle and this year, he also helped raise money for the RFDS by walking in the annual Oceans To Outback October fundraising challenge.
