CHESTERFIELD CO., Va. -- A Chesterfield County man was reunited with the first responders who saved his life earlier this year. It was also thanks, in part, to a recently implemented program within the Chesterfield Fire & EMS Department.
"God, it's been forever, man," William Jessee said of how long he has been waiting to say thank you to the members of Fire Station 24.
Their first meeting was back in February when he was involved in a traumatic accident near Hull Street and Genito Roads.
"Just yelling and screaming at them. 'Help! Help! Help!'," Jessee recalled of the immediate aftermath of the accident where his legs were crushed between two box trucks. "I was hurting pretty bad."
Firefighter/paramedics Andrew Lape and Jeremy Stone, plus firefighter/EMT Andrew Kaiser were among those dispatched to
"As we were driving there, [the call] just started getting upgraded more and more and it's only about a two-minute drive away," said Lape. "And so, it went from sounding pretty bad to sounding pretty terrible."
Lape said the primary injury to Jessee was a crushed femur in his right leg and he was suffering from internal bleeding. He said they stopped the bleeding and loaded him up in the ambulance to take him to VCU Medical Center.
As they were preparing to leave, Chesterfield Fire & EMS Medical Director Dr. Alan Yee showed up on the scene and hopped on the ambulance.
Because of Jessee's blood loss, Yee suggested they utilize a recently implemented program in the county where a mobile team carries units of whole blood and is able to respond to scenes where it could be of better use than the typical treatment of a saline solution.
"Typically, we what we would do is stop the bleeding initially -- prevent any more further blood loss and then try to resuscitate with fluids which would be like a normal saline solution…and just, that's not exactly the best fluid replacement," said Stone "So. implementing the blood program and being able to get him have a unit of blood before the hospital was the best thing for him."
Jessee would receive a further six units of blood at the hospital, approximately three-quarters of the blood that is normally in an adult body.
"Seeing him walk around today is kind of amazing. Nobody thought that day that he was ever going to walk again," said Lape.
Jessee said he had a rod replace his femur and he began walking again within the last month andhopes to be able to return to some of his passions.
"[Refereed] basketball for 30 years. Hope that get back to that maybe this year. So, we'll see. And then walk the dogs every day," said Jessee -- something he has, sort of, been able to do after his wife, Brenda Watts, got him a mini-Jeep (think Power Wheels, but for adults).
But as Jessee and Watts begin to rebuild their future, they wanted to make sure to say thank you to those who made it possible.
"Y'all did an amazing job and I'm so grateful. So grateful for a second chance," said Watts.
"They do it every day and they don't know how grateful people are that they do things for, you know what I mean?" added Jessee.
For the first responders, who say they normally only get 30 minutes with someone before moving to the next, it was a welcome gesture.
"Just to see that we get to make, you know, a good difference in somebody's life is really rewarding, because we typically, you know, we don't get to see what happens on the other end," said Lape.
Since Jesse's case, the county has utilized the whole blood program six more times including most recently earlier this week.
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