It was just after the holiday season, and Kayla Ashley was going through the aftermath of the holiday festivities. She was taking care of her mother, who was unwell on Christmas Day, and noticed a few days later that both her daughters were also starting to feel unwell. What started as a normal-looking sickness led to Kayla’s daughter needing a transport with Ornge through a snowstorm. 

It was December 30, 2024, and Kayla had noticed that both her daughters were sick and showing no signs of improvement.  The family took a trip to the local walk-in clinic, where the girls were prescribed with antibiotics and sent home. Her eldest daughter, Abigail, began to get worse over the next day. Abigail was born premature and lives with medical complications, so Kayla is always wary of when Abigail gets sick.

“It was getting so much worse, and I was at the point of worrying about dehydration because she’s not taking anything. It was about 3 o’clock, and she was still sleeping in the chair,” said Kayla. “I woke her up and said ok, you need to get up, let’s have something to drink, let’s go to the bathroom, and it’s only a 10-foot walk to the bathroom, and by the time she got there, she was patting her chest, saying it was hard to breath, she had sweat dripping off her face.”

This is when Kayla got her daughter changed and rushed her to the Guelph General Hospital emergency room. Abigail was triaged in 20 minutes, where attending staff began to take her vitals. 

“The nurse is asking some questions and pops the pulse thing on her finger, and she said 85, and she’s like ‘ok let’s do it again’,” said Kayla. “She takes it off and puts it on the other finger, and it’s still the same and says ok I’ll be right back, and she ran out of the room and down the hallway and in my mind, I’m losing it. I'm freaking out like oh my god, the nurse is running, something is bad.”

Abigail was rushed into the ICU of the emergency room, and the attending physicians began running more tests. The doctors diagnosed Abigail with double lung pneumonia and possible sepsis. It was at this point Abigail was on 75 per cent high flow oxygen. The clinical staff told Kayla that Abigail had reached the maximum amount of oxygen they could provide her. The attending Paediatrician made the decision to request a transport with Ornge for Abigail. 

“She was going to be transferred to McMaster Children’s Hospital, they have a bed for her. I asked was it going to be a patient transfer coming to get her? They said no she’s too sick for a regular ambulance we’re going to have the Ornge air team come,” said Kayla. 

However, there was a problem with Abigail’s transport. A snowstorm had rolled in, and Kayla and the rest of the hospital staff were unsure if the helicopter would be able to complete the transport. Luckily, on January 1, 2025, there was a break in the storm, and the helicopter arrived in Guelph and was ready to take Abigail. The Ornge team introduced themselves and prepared Abigail and Kayla for the flight ahead of them. 

“They introduced themselves right away, ‘we’re Abbie’s personal team, we’re going to take good care of her’. They gave her a teddy, and they were good at explaining everything to me, but they also were on Abbie’s level and explaining to her what was going to happen. They were just wonderful,” said Kayla.

Unfortunately, during the flight, weather conditions changed again, which rerouted the Ornge transport crew to Pearson Airport. An Ornge land ambulance would meet Kayla and Abigail at the airport and make the rest of the trip to McMaster Children’s Hospital. 

“About halfway through the flight, the gentleman had plugged in my headset and said, ‘so we have a problem, because of the storm it’s not safe to land in Hamilton so we have to land at Pearson airport’,” said Kayla. “It was pure stress, like we’re up in the air and we’re not landing at the hospital or close to it, we’re going to the huge airport.”

The same paramedics from the helicopter also accompanied Abigail on the drive to McMaster. Once at McMaster, the Ornge transport team escorted Abigail up to her room and transferred her care to the clinical team there. Abigail underwent several tests again and had her oxygen boosted to 80 per cent high flow. 

“There were doctors everywhere, the Ornge air crew was going through how she was when we picked her up, her oxygen, how she is now, these are the things we had to do while enroute with her. And then it was a big woosh of people everywhere,” said Kayla. “They determined through some more testing that the pneumonia she had was Walking Pneumonia. They said the antibiotics weren’t working. So, she had to go on Azithromycin, the one that was going to target the pneumonia.”

It was a week until Kayla noticed the antibiotics started to make a difference in Abigail’s condition. She was also able to walk to the bathroom without sweating or having her oxygen levels drop drastically. The clinical staff gave Abigail the clear to be discharged and go home. Kayla also bought an at-home pulse oximeter to monitor Abigail at home.

“When we heard that she would be coming home, we went on Amazon and actually bought one of those finger oxygen readers just to put my mind at ease, just for her coming home,” said Kayla.

Abigail, who is now 16, is still on her road to recovery and is learning to manage her asthma diagnosis with her new puffers. She has seen her friends and is working with her teachers to catch up on her schoolwork. Kayla says that she cannot ever forget the role Ornge played in Abigail’s journey. We acknowledge the expertise of our paramedics, Operations Control Centre staff and especially the skills and decision-making confidence of the Ornge pilots to change course and make a choice that was both safe and patient-centred. 

“Just thank you, you were like a calm presence in the storm. Thank you for also explaining things to Abbie so she wasn’t left in the dark. She knew what was going on, they were so professional and just caring at the same time. They had a job to do but they did it with so much care and understanding,” said Kayla. “It gives a whole new appreciation. We live right by the Guelph airport, so we will see Ornge in the air flying over Guelph quite a bit. It hits different now that we’ve actually personally experienced it.” 
 

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• Patients and Families