After leaving Vancouver’s historic Gastown district July 2, Dr. Nas Rafi, 30, was walking with her uncle and his family when there came the screech of brakes and a female cyclist was pitched off her bike and into the path of a limousine.
“I didn’t see what happened, but I was told later that the young lady had swerved to avoid hitting a car door that someone had opened just in front of her,” Rafi told The Vancouver Sun.
She lives in California and is completing her residency as—of all things—an emergency physician at the University of California San Diego Health System.
The cyclist had swerved to avoid the car door, but then fell into the outside lane where she was struck by a limousine coming up behind her.
“I heard my aunt and my cousin scream and I turned and could see a young girl beneath the tire of the limousine,” Rafi said.
The young woman was face down, wearing a backpack and was jammed under the vehicle with the front tire against her neck and head.
Rafi threw her purse to her uncle and ran to a small group of people gathered around the cyclist.
“They were upset, no one was touching her and they didn’t know what to do. I got down beside her and they said, ‘What are you doing?’ and I said. ‘I’m a doctor.’”
The cyclist was lying in a pool of blood and Rafi’s uncle was asking bystanders for a towel or anything to stop the bleeding, but Rafi told him that was not her main concern.
“There was blood everywhere,” said Rafi. “I put my fingers on her neck and her face is completely blue. If she had pulses, I couldn’t find them.
“When someone’s involved in an accident, you are not supposed to move them because if there’s a neck or back injury they could be paralyzed, but I’m looking at this girl and she’s essentially dead at this point.
“She’s not breathing and I have to try to do something to get her to breathe and live — paralysis is secondary,” she said.
Her uncle, Siamak Rafi, had the limousine driver slowly back up so his niece could get to the cyclist.
The doctor asked one of the men present to hold the girl’s neck.
“While I’m doing this, someone who’d walked up, a spectator, said, ‘Don’t move her’ and he’s yelling at me to stop and my uncle and aunt are saying, ‘She’s a doctor; leave her alone.’
“At this point the girl’s laying face down so we turn her on to her back and I try to open her mouth. First thing you learn in the emergency room is airway, breathing, circulation.
“Her jaw was clenched so it took some effort, but I put my fingers in between her teeth and pried her mouth open. And when I did that, there was blood inside and her tongue was back in her throat blocking her airway. So I pulled out her tongue and I performed a jaw lift, which opens the airway.”
The cyclist began to breathe.
“She takes a gasp for air and wakes up. And then I tried to explain what had happened. She was very agitated, very upset, she was screaming, ’Take your hands off me.’ She didn’t know what was going on. I tried to calm her down until the paramedics arrived,” she said.
Given the way the cyclist was able to move once she became conscious, Rafi felt relieved that she had likely not suffered paralysis, but she was concerned she might have had internal head injuries.
Due to patient confidentiality laws, the hospital was unable to disclose what had happened to the young woman once she was admitted for treatment. But she was clearly alive when the Sun wrote about Rafi’s treatment seven days after the accident.
For Rafi, it was the first time she’d treated anyone outside the well-equipped confines of the emergency room.
“It was a pretty amazing experience. The ambulance crew always gets to injured people first, so we never see them at the critical moment,” she said.
“The ambulance has equipment, such as airways to intubate patients, but I didn’t have a thing. Initially I was afraid she was gone and I’d have to tell all the people standing there scared. I was thinking, ‘What do I have? Do I have a pen so I can make a hole in her trachea? I didn’t have anything.”
Her uncle, who came to Canada 12 years ago with his family, is proud of her. “I think she saved this young girl’s life, but my niece is so humble she didn’t want any recognition. She told me, ‘Uncle, this is my job.’ But I think it was very special what she did out there in the street.”