BROWNSVILLE, Texas (KVEO) – A Lake Charles, Louisiana family is expressing profound gratitude to a Rio Grande Valley doctor for his help during a frightening situation on an airplane.
A family vacation takes lots of planning, but it is difficult to plan for unexpected emergencies.
The Wright family’s vacation got off to a terrifying start when one of their children, Shemar Wright, 8, passed out on their flight to Disneyworld.
“We were sitting a couple of rows behind Shemar and my mother-in-law, and my wife kept noticing her mom frighting, just looking shaky,” said father, Myron Wright.
Wright went to check on Shemar and found that he had become nauseous and thrown up the hot Cheetos he had eaten earlier. After giving him a sip of water and cleaned him off a little bit, he went back to his seat.
“He looked okay,” said Wright. “Well, maybe 10 minutes later, one of the flight attendants came to the seat and he was like, ‘Hey, I want to let you know your mother-in-law just told me that your son just passed out and it seems like he’s unresponsive.’”
Wright went back up to Shemar’s seat and immediately started praying over him. “At that moment I was in praying mode, I wasn’t really listening, hearing anything else that was going on.”
The pilot of the flight had made an announcement asking if there was any medical personal aboard the plane.
Thankfully, Dr. Bobby Lachky, an emergency physician with Envision Healthcare working at Valley Regional Medical Center in Brownsville was also on his way to Disneyworld and went to check on Shemar.
“This was the first chance that my wife and I had really had a chance to do any kind of vacation since COVID, COVID has kept us pretty busy here at the hospital,” said Dr. Lachky.
Shemar began to regain consciousness and seemed okay the rest of the flight, but Dr. Lachky refused to leave the family’s side until he knew they would be taken care of, even after the plane had landed.
“Once we got off the plane, he was like, ‘I’ll come with you all,” said Wright. “He was actually rolling Shemar on the wheelchair himself.”
Wright explained that Dr. Lachky even gave them a polo shirt out of his personal bag to give to Shemar so that he would not have to wear the one he threw up on.
Once the family was in line for a rental car, they thought Dr. Lachky would leave in his own rental car with his family, but he stayed with them and guided them to the nearest hospital. Dr. Lachky finally left the family once they got to the children’s hospital.
The children’s hospital blamed motion sickens for Shemar’s episode but recommended further evaluation due to heart conditions that run in the family.
Both Shemar and Dr. Lachky got to enjoy Disneyworld with their families.
“I felt good, but I think the way I was trained and the work environment here and the culture here is to always treat every patient like family,” said Dr. Lachky.
“He went above and beyond. He left his wife on the flight with no hesitation. He takes his oath very seriously,” said Mrs. Wright.
