‘That was the last flight out of Fort Myers’; Local man airlifted to NCH for emergency surgery

Hurricane or not, medical emergencies do not wait. A Lee County man learned that after being airlifted before Hurricane Helene to get life-or-death treatment at NCH in Naples.

It was a risky proposition. He was told his flight was the last one to take off ahead of the storm.

Luck is funny. It all depends on how you look at things. Sitting in a hospital bed, his heart hooked up to two machines to keep it pumping, yet somehow Frank Shaw sees good fortune.

“Right now, I’m alive and lucky,” Shaw told WINK News health and medical reporter Amy Oshier.

A lot of things had to go his way. “All the way through was lucky. The helicopter flight, everything was absolutely lucky. That was the last flight out of Fort Myers,” he noted.

In the days leading up to Hurricane Helene, Shaw was in a hospital in Lee County for a pre-planned surgery. During this, something entirely unplanned happened.

“He was having an elective procedure done to his arteries, to his legs and during the process, he was unlucky enough to have a heart attack during the procedure,” said NCH cardiothoracic surgeon Brian Solomon.

Shaw had gone into heart failure, and just down the road, NCH had equipment that could keep him alive, if he could get airlifted there in time. At the same time, a hurricane was headed up the gulf.

“A heart attack is a scary enough thing to happen and an unstable patient is a scary enough thing to have to manage,” Solomon said, “but having to do all of that in the setting of an impending hurricane and the impending possibility of flooding and loss of facilities and loss of ability to travel is a much scarier issue.”

Shaw made it in time for Solomon to perform a life-saving procedure.

“What was his condition when he got airlifted here?” Oshier said.

“Well, he was about as sick as he can be,” Solomon said. “The situation was pretty grave when he arrived. He was on multiple cardiac medications to keep his blood pressure up and to keep his heart moving, and by the time the helicopter was able to land, we had to do chest compressions on him to keep his heart pumping.”

NCH is the only hospital in the area that has large, exterior pumps that can keep blood flowing through the heart.

“These pumps allow the heart to be supported as you’re recovering from a heart attack or recovering from surgery,” Solomon said.

It all came together for Shaw. “I’m feeling a lot better. So especially today, today’s been my best day.”

Lucky for Shaw, the storm and his crisis have now passed.