United Hatzalah ambucycle (archive)
United Hatzalah ambucycle (archive)Shira Hershkopf

United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Noa Salant was shocked when she responded to an emergency incident to find her mother to be the patient in need of medical care.

The family was supposed to get together for some quality time and both Noa and her mother were arriving by bicycle from different locations. “As I was driving, I heard screams from up ahead of me and saw a few people standing around someone lying on the street,” said Salant after the incident, which occurred two weeks ago.

When Salant arrived at the scene she saw a very familiar woman lying on the sidewalk injured- her mother. “I immediately went into EMT mode and began triaging her. I took her pulse while simultaneously calling for an ambulance. I asked the people around her if anyone saw what happened and all they would share was that she fell.”

Noa (right) and her mother.
Noa (right) and her mother.United Hatzalah

Salant relived the dramatic moments of the treatment. “I noticed that my mother could not move her pelvis. I began treating her for her injuries and immobilizing her so that none of the injuries would get worse. Other volunteers from United Hatzalah began arriving and they assisted me in providing treatment. When the ambulance came some ten minutes later, I joined the team on the ambulance and kept watch over my mother the entire way to the hospital. When we arrived at the emergency room we found out that she had broken her hip."

Salant spent the next few days visiting and caring for her mother in the hospital. “The doctors told us that this is the type of injury where there is no corrective surgery and that the best medicine is to keep my mother stable and her spirits up in order to give her body time to heal. They added that the care I gave at the scene prevented the injury from getting worse. It is thanks to the training that I received from United Hatzalah that I was able to keep my cool and follow all the procedures and protocols necessary even though I was treating my own mother,” Salant concluded.