Nurse saves pregnant Tennessee woman
KINGPORT, Tenn. (WCYB) – A pregnant woman in Kingsport, Tennessee and her newborn baby are both doing well after the woman’s life-threatening collapse at a Christmas show.
They are both okay thanks to a nurse in the audience who knew exactly what to do.
Rachel Cunningham was directing a children’s Christmas play when she suddenly collapsed while pregnant.
Carrie Kiersnowski, the nurse, says, “I could tell pretty quickly that she wasn’t breathing normally, her color was bad, her lips were starting to get really pale and cyanotic, so I made a decision to go ahead and start CPR just to make sure that oxygenated blood was still pumping everywhere that it needed to go.”
Pastor Jackie Flanary says the nurse flipped Cunningham over and started to perform compressions until she was visibly breathing.
Cunningham was rushed to the hospital, where family members were advised that she and her baby may not make it.
After an emergency C-section and several days at the hospital, Cunningham and her baby made it out healthy and safe, but not without a scare.
“To wake up and be missing three days of your life and in that was a major life event of having a child, that is a very scary thing, but now that I’ve had time and wrapped my mind around this whole situation, I am more than anything thankful,” Cunningham says.
