Situation moulds you in anything: An engineer saves a life as a doctor

New Delhi, May 8: Do you remember Hindi movie 3 Idiots? The same in which Aamir Khan, an engineering student delivers a baby in an emergency situation using his ‘engineer brainy techniques’ without any doctor’s help; not even electricity. The same situation aroused and here is a story where a senior undergraduate engineer saves a life that too in a flight.

Karttikeya Mangalam, a senior undergraduate in Electrical Engineering, was coming back from Geneva to New Delhi via Moscow after his final exams, this February. After the three hours of take off, he heard air hostess announcing of any doctor in flight as there was a medical emergency.

The patient named Thomas who was about 30 years old. He had Type 1 diabetes since the age of 11 and usually always carried his insulin pump with him. In usual circumstance, he kept the pump attached to his abdomen over his liver and would set the dosage of insulin to take before eating anything through a dial in the pump. However, he was required to take off his pump for security check at Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow and forgot to collect his equipment from the deposit tray in a hurry. Now, it has already been 5 hours since he last took insulin and he is feeling that his blood sugar level has risen way beyond normal levels. Being a diabetic for over 19 years, he has learned to always carry his sugar level checking equipment with him. It showed somewhere around 21, and it has to be 6 ideally.

 

Sharing his experience, Mangalam said, “that he needed urgent insulin or he would pass out with possibly multiple organ failures and coma or worse. Thomas already had some cartridges of short-term fast working insulin with him; all he needed was a method to inject them.”

The doctor himself was diabetic but used a pen-esque contraption to inject insulin himself which was different than Thomas’s. Somehow they used the technique but it was chemically impairing.

After an hour after the situation worsened as Thomas started foaming from his mouth and fell unconscious.

Using WIFI onboard, Mangalam saw online videos to fix an insulin pump in which he realized that a spring is missing in the pump. He used his brain and asked the co-passengers to give 4 5 pens in which there were springs.

Mangalam managed to fix the pump with pens’ springs and Thomas got the dose of insulin which made his blood sugar levels to be normal and he landed in New Delhi in a bit good situation. And he was taken to nearby hospital for check-up.

This story shows that doesn’t matter which profession or field you are; the thing you need is the brain and cleverness to tackle, handle any situation at any cost.