Heroes Among Us: Health Clinic Team Rallies When Nurse Collapses

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[When a nurse at the well-traveled REA Clinic south of Du Quoin collapsed from a heart attack outside the clinic Monday, everybody at "Team REA" made up their minds that nobody is going to die today.

Particularly not one of their own.

It's a story of the heroes among us with a twist of Elvis Presley and a stunning outcome.

Rhonda Helsley, LPN, 38, has been a nurse at the clinic for six years. Her husband is Travis Helsley.The couple resides in Du Quoin.

Rhonda didn't feel well Monday morning and a sick day would normally require Rhonda to contact clinic manager Linda Quillman. Quillman was on her perennial pilgrimage to Graceland in Memphis to celebrate Elvis Presley's birthday. Rhonda didn't want to call into the REA Clinic's main office in Christopher to book a sick day, so she headed for work.

As the morning wore on Rhonda complained of not feeling well and being hot. Rhonda told friends, "I just feel like my heart is fluttering." She stepped outside with fellow worker Angie Palmer to get some air and suddenly collapsed from a heart attack.

Angie ran for help and Dr. Andrew Yochum, whom Rhonda works for, got to her immediately. So did clinic physician Dr. Patrick Riley. They began chest compressions as staff members scrambled for the crash cart, which interestingly enough, Rhonda is charged with maintaining.

After 12 rounds of cardiac shock treatments from the defibrillator there was little or no response as the ambulance headed for Marshall Browning Hospital. According to Quillman there was no sign of life at the hospital, but Dr. Yochum refused to let anyone call for a time of death. The chest compressions continued and his determination peaked.

This is crazy, but all of the sudden there was a pulse. Rhonda was stable and was prepared for transport to the Prairie Heart STAT heart catheterization lab at Memorial Hospital in Carbondale. A cath was successfully inserted and Rhonda's condition improved. She is scheduled for a second heart cath procedure today.

Truth is stranger than fiction and Quillman gets a chill thinking about what might have happened if she had not gone to Memphis, Rhonda had called in sick, then suffered the heart attack at home in the absence of the medical team that saved her life.