Mission Ready Podcast

00:00:04:27 – 00:00:58:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Welcome to a bonus episode of Mission Ready Season 2, presented by ARC Resources. We hadn’t planned to make a bonus episode this season, but then we interviewed Dr. Megan McElheran of Wayfound Mental Health Group. She created the Before Operational Stress, or BOS, program. You heard us talk about that in the final episode of Draidyn Wollmann’s story. It’s designed to create proactive mental health tools in emergency responders, a demographic that sees far more trauma than the average person. We wanted to learn from experts in the field about what emergency responders face before, during, and after an incident. What we got was a conversation that we couldn’t limit to just the brief portion you heard in that last episode. Dr. McElheran and Ryan Collyer, a former advanced care paramedic she hired to lead the BOS program, joined Lyle and I in studio.

00:00:58:15 – 00:01:14:01
Dr. Megan McElheran: My name is Dr. Megan McElheran. I’m a clinical psychologist registered in the province of Alberta. I am the CEO of Wayfound Mental Health Group. I’m the developer of the Before Operational Stress program. I have many hats. You want me to keep going?

00:01:14:04 – 00:01:14:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yes.

00:01:14:27 – 00:01:35:12
Dr. Megan McElheran: Okay. I’m the chair of the clinical subcommittee of the National Advisory Council to the Public Safety Steering Committee. I am a contributor to a number of research projects within the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment. I’m a trainer of prolonged exposure therapy from Dr. [Edna] Foa’s program at University of Pennsylvania.

00:01:35:14 – 00:01:39:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: You know, Deb, when I said we need an expert to weigh in, I think we got the right one.

00:01:39:17 – 00:01:45:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: I think we’re going to need to line you up for every podcast. We’ll fit you in somewhere.

00:01:45:14 – 00:01:45:27
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: That’s right.

00:01:46:03 – 00:01:51:23
Dr. Megan McElheran: But just call me Megan. And I’m a dog owner and like a, you know, wife and friend and all those things. That’s the more important stuff.

00:01:51:24 – 00:01:52:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: We’re lucky to have you. Thank you.

00:01:52:28 – 00:01:56:14
Dr. Megan McElheran: Well, thank you for having me. I love this, I love this conversation. So..

00:01:57:01 – 00:02:11:18
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Well, just why don’t we start with when you read a bit of the synopsis that Lyle sent over — we’ll ask the same question we asked Ryan — just from, like, you know, a clinical and a research– and just given all of your background, when you read that, what are the first two or three things that popped into your mind?

00:02:11:20 – 00:02:58:09
Dr. Megan McElheran: You know, I paused, because what immediately occurred to me and I was able to articulate to myself is that these people, everyone who responded, including the the teenager who was affected, I mean, they are now tied together by this experience for the rest of their lives. And there can be real beauty in that, but there can also be real tragedy in that. And I oftentimes think about these types of experiences as what we see in the Earth when an earthquake happens, right? If the Earth splits apart, there is a chasm left behind. And, you know, while we can fill that in and while we can repair it, it’s there. And life becomes organized around how life was before that chasm appeared and now how it is afterwards as I try to do what I need to do to to fill the chasm back in.

00:02:58:11 – 00:03:10:24
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: From a scientific perspective, from a brain science perspective, what is a psychological injury? Can you kind of put that into— I mean, we don’t have a full seven-year university course to go through here, but can you some summarize for us what that is?

00:03:10:26 – 00:03:12:14
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah, talk to us like we’re five years old.

00:03:12:15 – 00:05:28:14
Dr. Megan McElheran: Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I think we all appreciate– as I say in the BOS program and, you know, say all the time: if something dangerous or threatening to our survival happens, we have all these mechanisms inside us that are immediately going to switch on to make sure that we live, right? That’s how our whole species is surviving and propagating through time. So, you know, the stress response and what can happen with chronic exposure of that stress reaction is that we start to limit the opportunity for the nervous system and our cognitive systems to do all that they need to do to turn an experience from an acute or short-term experience into a longer-term experience. So, you know, if I’m being chased through the woods by a bear — right? — I need to be able to get away from that bear. And during the time I’m running, there’s whole parts of my system that have shut down. Right? I’m not thinking about, you know, evaluating my running speed or, you know, the physics that are involved in what I’m trying to do. I’m literally just focused on getting out of there. And my physiology is giving me all the blood and oxygen and everything I need to do that. So I get away from the bear. Right? Well, then there’s this whole balancing act that goes on to kick things back into gear — right? — so that I can start to process what happened to me. And my body can get rid of all that cortisol, and I can sort of start to talk to people and go, “Oh my goodness, you wouldn’t believe what I just, you know, had to accomplish.” And that’s evidence that something we call our prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain and our system that makes meaning and sense and evaluates our experiences, it kicks back into gear. And that’s part of how we metabolize and work through these types of experiences. So you can imagine someone who is chronically stress activated who, for whatever reason, is limited in their processing or their balancing or their metabolizing of these experiences. They never get that full completion, right? They never get that part of their system coming back online that’s helping them to digest and metabolize and ultimately turn these things into longer term memories. So when we think about someone who 25 years after an experience can think of it or feel it or experience like it just happened, it’s because it kind of it is. Right? It’s like the whole system hasn’t had its opportunity to put a stamp on, of completion on what happened.

00:05:28:16 – 00:05:33:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So is that the research that you’re working on, is trying to help find that stamp?

00:05:33:11 – 00:06:49:03
Dr. Megan McElheran: Well, the research that we’re working on is trying to look at, can we do something by way of mitigating how chronically people are stressed? What we’re trying to do is — right? — we never want to get rid of the stress response. That’s— we need that. That’s evolutionarily designed. What we want to do is give people more off ramps so that they have this a little bit more balancing between what happens to them when they have to respond and what they then can do to take care of themselves, to allow some of that metabolizing and digestion to happen. But what we see is, and you know, what the research to date would tell us, is that people are becoming injured because they’re just chronically over-activated. They’re chronically out of balance. And so they’re not metabolizing experiences. They’re not getting the physiological reset. These things aren’t happening. And, well, you know, we are actually remarkably well designed. We can tolerate these things for significant amounts of time. Eventually it catches up with all of us. So what we’re trying to do with our research and with BOS is say, let’s, you know, really build people’s awareness of this — and not just our awareness of it, but actually give them, hopefully daily, like, mental hygiene tools and tactics and interventions that they can use to keep trying to, you know, create, facilitate that regulation and that balance.

00:06:49:06 – 00:06:52:25
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So just from a practical perspective, unpack that a little bit. What does that look like.

00:06:52:25 – 00:06:53:03
Dr. Megan McElheran: Yeah

00:06:53:03 – 00:06:53:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: What are those tools?

00:06:54:00 – 00:08:46:19
Dr. Megan McElheran: Sure. So, if I even just use the experience that we’re talking about, right? So one of the people who was at that call, in my way of thinking, what that could have looked like or what it could look like for anyone moving forward, is okay, first and foremost, just recognize you’re probably not going to sleep super well tonight, right? So don’t try to expect yourself to be in a state that you can’t possibly be in. This is too enormous. You know, this is not the kind of thing that you, like a light switch, switch off. So, like, first and foremost, normalize the fact that you’ve internalized this. You’ve been impacted and it’s not just going to, you know, because time has passed, go away. Then focus on what you can do physiologically. Right? You have just massively disrupted your physiological functioning because you had to, right? You had to respond to this thing. So you’re going to need to spend some time, you know, looking at, how do I actually facilitate this digestion I’m talking about. And lots of times that’s gentle exercise; that’s, you know, movement. That’s not going into the basement and sitting down on a recliner with a drink in hand. That’s like actually, you know, doing things that are going to help the body to realize that it’s safe. Drink water, eat food. Drinking water is really important; like, flush the system out of all that cortisol, allow it to do its thing. Socially, right? You don’t need to start to talk about what happened or how you’re feeling or what you went through, but you have to at least acknowledge the fact that you’re in a process, right? This unbelievably tragic thing happened at work today. Thankfully, it has a good outcome. But here’s kind of the highlights of what I’m dealing with. I’m going to need some time here and I really want to be able to, like, is it okay if I call on you? If I need to talk or when I feel ready? Right? So we’re not just pretending like it didn’t happen. That’s what I think so much has happened for folks doing this work. It’s like, “Oh yeah. No, no that’s perfectly natural. That’s the job. This is what I signed up for.” It’s like, no, it’s not. Like, you’re being asked to do these extraordinarily difficult things as if it was like equivalent to making a latte. And it isn’t.

00:08:46:21 – 00:08:48:17
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah, I love that. That’s so true.

00:08:48:20 – 00:10:47:02
Dr. Megan McElheran: That’s the thing, right? And what we are really trying to advocate for and establish as a standard is being more proactive by way of how we’re psychologically preparing people. Like, let’s not be so reactive. But okay, so we have to react in some kind of a way. Yeah. Set out the coffee, set up the water and donuts; like, create opportunities for people to come together if they so choose. But don’t assume that everybody is going to want to do that at the same time and in the same way. So, you know, there needs to be multiple pathways for people to both have the awareness that they need to recognize that, “I have been impacted and I’m not metabolizing this maybe as quickly as I’d like or as fully as I’d like.” And so then, “Who’s the person I trust, and what’s my pathway to get to them?” I love the development of peer support. Right? Our research across the country would say that your general uniform service personnel is going to be more comfortable talking to a peer than directly to a mental health professional or a spouse or something like that. So, have those people easily identifiable so that if it is three weeks after or six months after — right? — because it is variable. Certainly what we understand with trauma is that a lot of times people can find ways to have the these experiences lie dormant, and then oftentimes it can be a relatively minor stressor, or it can be five years down the line where something happens and that’s that queue and boom, all this stuff kind of erupts. Right? So I think what we’re really trying to encourage people to contemplate is that there is no one right answer. There needs to be a context and a culture and a sentiment where this is just okay. Right? So you go through this incident and it doesn’t come back on you for five years. Cool. We’re ready for that. And we normalize that. That can happen. That happens all the time for people. Right? And that’s– I think that’s such an important part of the conversation because I do think what happens for people is they get bought into the idea that they’ve got a week or two or three and then they should be good. Right? And we just simply don’t work that way.

00:10:47:03 – 00:10:47:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah.

00:10:47:17 – 00:11:22:05
Dr. Megan McElheran: You know, something I’m fond of saying is that, you know, in the world of the psyche, we don’t keep time, right? So our experiences are not getting time-stamped like our physical age is, right? So the very, very, very first patient I had working in the United States Veterans Affairs system was a woman who had been sexually assaulted multiple times during the Korean War, and I started to work with her when she was 84. And she had had surgery and there was something about the helplessness of being under anesthesia that erupted all of this. And so there we are dealing with something, you know, 40-plus years later, right?

00:11:22:12 – 00:11:25:17
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Oh, wow. That’s incredible

00:11:25:19 – 00:11:49:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Now, we contextualized bringing both of you in here today in the framework of first response and how frontline workers look after their mental health. Some of the people involved in this story are not first-response trained. Is the approach different for different groups like that, where people– some groups are a little bit more prepared, other groups are unfortunately just dragged into these situations unannounced?

00:11:49:06 – 00:13:26:02
Dr. Megan McElheran: It’s a really interesting question, and I think there’s kind of ways to say that each group has its advantages and disadvantages, quite frankly. Right? So, like the the foreman or, you know, your general person in the community, you know, we generally sort of think that they are going to have maybe one, maybe up to three, kind of traumatically, potentially psychologically traumatic events in a lifetime. Right? And so that means, you know, we’re not necessarily super well equipped for being ready for this kind of thing, knowing what to do. But we also don’t have the frequency of exposure like our first responders do, right? So in this narrative that we’re talking about, that we’re trying to change, we’re trying to orient people to the reality of, you know, a current data would suggest we’re thinking people are having about 100 of these potentially types of traumatic events per year — right? — so you think about a long-term career — we’re talking about thousands of exposures to events that could be potentially traumatic. So, in a funny way that can arm our first responders to thinking, “Okay, like, I’ve got to be on the lookout for this,” but it can also have a funny kind of thing, which is to say, “Well, you know, therefore I should actually know how to deal with this.” And so we can see that, in a strange kind of way, become a barrier to help-seeking. You know? Your average civilian may go, “This is what I just experienced. I’m not doing well.” And hopefully a community would rally and say, “Of course you’re not. How do we help you?” Whereas sometimes with the first responders, even more so with themselves and what they might hear from other people, they go, “No, I’m good. This is my job. This is what I get called out to do.” Right? And therefore they find ways to have it go dormant.

00:13:26:04 – 00:13:33:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah… wow… I don’t know what I’m going to cut from this because this is all gold.

00:13:33:07 – 00:13:34:10
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Write another episode.

00:13:34:11 – 00:13:35:19
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: That’s right. There’s just so much.

00:13:35:24 – 00:13:43:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So did you say earlier that you developed the program? And, so, will you walk us through that journey?

00:13:43:11 – 00:18:47:18
Dr. Megan McElheran: Yeah, happily. So as I mentioned, I’ve been doing this work for a long time. And I just absolutely love it. And so — when was this? I’m starting to get lost in time — it was about, I think around 2014, 2015, something like that. At the time, I was working pretty much as a solo practitioner. I had been for a number of years in Calgary. And because of the work that I do, I was just run over with business of people who needed this kind of help. And what was happening is that I was seeing, I was literally seeing 30, 35 patients in the course of a week, and they were all uniformed service personnel, and they were all coming in with really chronic, trauma-related dysregulation and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms: depression, substance-abuse problems, not being able to work, marriages having broken down. Like, that was the common picture. And so I would do what I do, which is, “Okay, let’s talk about what’s happening to you. And here’s what’s happening in your nervous system. And here is why we think this is occurred. And here’s how it shows up. And here’s what I’m going to do about it.” And a couple of things would happen. The first would be, almost unequivocally, people would say, “I’m so glad to know this because I understand I’m not going crazy,” right? “Like, I think I’ve just, up to this point in time, I just thought I was, you know, a toy put together incorrectly. Now I recognize that there’s a reason why this is happening. And, man, I wish I had known this when I started my career.” And so I’m having this conversation probably 30 times a week. So, 30 hours worth of having this conversation. And almost even from a little bit of self-preservation, but also from a place of a bit of existential crisis, I just kind of went, like, “I can’t keep doing this. If this is going to be my career, this is like– I would be ashamed if this is my career, because what the heck are we doing here?” I just was so fed up with what we were doing. I’m just like, “This reactive approach to things just drives me a little bit around the bend.” And, you know, I have just seen– I have I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours with people who have devoted their lives to our communities and our country, and I have seen them give their lives over, and they are, you know, they have lost their lives. They’ve lost their vitality. They’ve lost their optimism in the face of what they’ve done for us. And I just cannot abide by that. And so, you know, everybody I think, would agree that, you know, like, people don’t deserve to live in misery. And so, yes, like, I very much, you know, I absolutely believe and will not probably never stop talking about this. Like, if we don’t actually teach people how to stay connected to themselves and how to maintain a connection to what matters most to them and their values, then, like, this is an inevitable pathway. This is not a surprise. It’s not a mystery. We are going to continue to create generations of people who are– who don’t know who they are, who feel lost, who are disconnected, who don’t want to be around people. And that’s not the way that we’re supposed to live. So yeah, very much it was like, “Let’s start giving this to people. Let’s help people actually leverage their humanity in this incredibly important work that they do,” versus teaching that in some way that they’re supposed to set that aside. And so it did. It took a while, but I started to look at, you know, I was being asked at that point in time by a national police organization if I could develop a mental health training program that would make officers more resilient. Like, “We want them to be tougher,” right? And I was just like, “Okay, I’ll look into this.” But it really took me– it was it was one of those happy accidents that took me into really diving deep into the empirical literature about, What are we talking about? Because we throw this term of resiliency around so quickly. What are we actually talking about? And a couple of other happy accidents happened. I was introduced to stoic philosophy, which we can have a whole other podcast on if you want. But that was a real crystallizing factor for me, because what I realized is that in contemporary public safety organizations, I think we’ve really inculcated people with what I would refer to as pseudo-stoicism, the notion that to be effective in your job, means to be unemotional means to be unaffected. And that’s not actually what the philosophy is about. So I put all those pieces together, and in a weekend, with my husband, I dictated the program and said, this is what it’s going to look like. And, you know, Modules 1 through 8. And in my way of thinking, as I was dictating this to my husband, who was writing it down, it was kind of looking at it from two vantage points: One being, here are the things we think you need to know to take care of yourself. And then the other path was, here’s what’s likely going to happen if you keep doing things in the same way. So like, here’s what’s going to happen to your nervous system if we just keep doing things, you know, as is. Here’s ways in which you can think about what your nervous system is doing and nervous system regulation and how you maybe can help yourself. Here’s how your thoughts are probably going to change if you leave this stuff, you know, untouched. Here’s how we can help you. So, it really kind of came from that perspective. And to my way of thinking, and my hope was, we could actually give this to people when they start their career so they’re starting out the gate with strategies and awareness and tools that they can then use, much like they would in, you know, physical exercise or training and protocols. Like, these are the things you need to do on a daily basis to take care of your mental hygiene, your mental wellness. That’s my, that was my dream.

00:18:47:20 – 00:19:08:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: If you could have any of these folks in front of you right now, what would you say to them? Any of these folks who are part of the initial response or, you know, put their hands on this patient or, you know, the occupational therapist who is so connected to him, and just all these people who are impacted because of this, what would you say to them?

00:19:08:23 – 00:20:06:03
Dr. Megan McElheran: You know, the immediate thing that I would say, and that comes to mind is just, like, I just– there’s a just deep, deep, deep well of gratitude I have for these people. I mean, I say this all the time: I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I was in crisis, if I was having an emergency, someone is going to turn up to help me. And it’s somebody that I don’t even know. You know? And so there’s just— most of the first responders that I know would bristle at that. They would say, “I don’t want your thanks, and I’m not a hero and all that,” but I don’t care. Like, that’s what I would say first, you know, and then the second I would say is, you know, please don’t treat yourself like a machine because you’re not. You know? You’re made of flesh and blood and bone and have a soul and are impacted by things. And that’s all the beautiful tapestry that makes us who we are. And so let’s honour that. Let’s respect that. You know? And just because you haven’t learned that yet doesn’t mean it’s not true, you know? And so let yourself be part of the story, not a bystander or just somebody who did their job.

00:20:06:06 – 00:20:22:20
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah. Like in this case, they were– you know, one of the first responders from Rosthern, a super small town, like, he was underneath the lawnmower running his hands along this kid, you know, felt where the blade hit him, wasn’t sure if it’s going to split his chest. Like, he was— right? Hey?

00:20:22:23 – 00:20:23:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Gilbert.

00:20:23:06 – 00:20:23:25
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Gilbert. He was,

00:20:23:28 – 00:20:24:01
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Advanced care paramedic.

00:20:24:01 – 00:20:41:18
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You know, he’ll never forget that. But the way he told us that story in such vivid detail, I could actually see him on the ground. Like, it was so crystal clear to him. It was like he just did it yesterday, and it was a year ago. And, but yeah, to him that was just, that’s just what you do. But to the layperson it’s like, “You did what?”

00:20:41:22 – 00:20:42:04
Dr. Megan McElheran: Yeah.

00:20:42:04 – 00:20:44:14
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And I think it is incredible what they do.

00:20:44:14 – 00:20:59:28
Dr. Megan McElheran: Oh my gosh, I had a session earlier today with a firefighter who just retired. And in the course of like a 60-minute session, he’s just talking with me, and he literally rattled off a dozen calls that, if any one of them happened to any of us, we would be, like, horrified. And our family members would be horrified on our behalf.

00:20:59:28 – 00:21:29:14
Dr. Megan McElheran: And he was like, “Oh yeah, there was this one. And then I was over this part of the city and there was that and there was that and there was that.” And it’s just like, “Dude, like, you are doing something extraordinary.” And I think it’s okay for people to recognize that, you know, you can still be a human being and ordinary yourself in the face of the extraordinary work that you do. And there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that. And I don’t mean extraordinary like, oh, you’ve got a cape and you’re a hero and all that, because I like I get that, that maybe feels uncomfortable. But what you’re being asked to do is extraordinary. And let’s treat it as such.

00:21:29:14 – 00:21:30:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah, yeah.

00:21:30:24 – 00:21:33:29
Dr. Megan McElheran: And what would our communities look like if we didn’t have these folks?

00:21:34:02 – 00:21:34:18
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So true.

00:21:34:21 – 00:21:55:12
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah. Well that’s right. So I kind of I’m going back to the very first question we asked you — not the introduction, the next question. When you read that synopsis, as you gave it some thought, what is the one thing you wanted to say in this podcast that you wanted people to take away?

00:21:55:15 – 00:22:43:07
Dr. Megan McElheran: You know, I think as I read it, what I could really envision is that the potential that many of the people involved, including the boy himself who was injured, may have walked away from that was recrimination and regret and guilt and why-didn’t-I’s and all that kind of thing. And I guess what I wish and I would love if people could really adopt broadly is this understanding that, like, we are just not in control of everything. Tragic things happen and we can only be responsible for the things that we legitimately can be responsible for. The real thing is just be kind with yourself. You know, just– we are so hard on ourselves, I think, generally speaking, and people who are in these response positions are so critical of themselves. And I just wish we could create more space for just that compassion and kindness.

00:22:43:10 – 00:22:50:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Excellent, excellent. Yeah, I definitely think many of the people that we spoke with need to hear those words. Yeah.

00:22:50:08 – 00:22:55:04
Dr. Megan McElheran: You can email me any time if you want to. I’m like happy to share that message whenever people want.

00:22:55:11 – 00:22:56:12
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Thank you.

00:22:56:12 – 00:23:04:09
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And now, a quick word from our Season 2 sponsor:

00:23:04:12 – 00:23:36:19
ARC ad: As Canada’s third largest natural gas producer and the largest producer of condensate, ARC Resources is proud to play an important role in the responsible development of Canada’s energy resources in delivering those resources. Safety is the number one priority, always, and it’s that core value that makes ARC’s partnership with STARS a natural fit. It’s our shared goal to ensure that everyone arrives home safely at the end of the day. Learn more about how ARC is leading the way for safe and responsible energy development at arcresources.com.

00:23:36:19 – 00:23:42:19
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Welcome back.

00:23:42:22 – 00:24:00:24
Ryan Collyer: So, my name is Ryan Collier and I’ve been an advanced care paramedic, recently retired, for, since 1999. And when I retired, I moved over to Wayfound Mental Health Group to support the Before Operational Stress program as the BOS lead and clinical liaison with the clinicians here in Calgary. And that’s where I’m at now.

00:24:00:26 – 00:24:03:18
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Summarize for me, what is the Before Operational Stress program?

00:24:03:23 – 00:24:22:18
Ryan Collyer: Sure. The Before Operational Stress program is a mental health training program. It increases literacy towards mental health. It increases and gives foundational tools towards how we can actually work through some of the complexities around mental health and injuries and occupational stress injuries that we encounter as first responders and public safety personnel.

00:24:22:20 – 00:24:29:16
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: When you read the synopsis of what happened in this particular case, what went through your mind?

00:24:29:19 – 00:25:11:10
Ryan Collyer: Crap. Right? And, I mean, it’s one of those scenarios that, you know, when you’re going into as a first responder on an ambulance or whether you’re in rotary wing, fixed wing, whatever your capacity is, it’s one of those ones where you’re going, “Okay, it’s time to disconnect anything that I know from an emotional standpoint and start running protocols in my head, on my way to the call. What are we dealing with? Is it hypovolemic shock? Are we starting to look at, you know, running– having to run our tranexamic acid, like TXA? Do we have to go down– what protocols am I going to start to– actually start to bring to bear so that when I arrive on scene, I can feel somewhat prepared?” Despite– you cannot prepare for calls like that.

00:25:11:12 – 00:25:30:20
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: From a psychological perspective, you put yourself in the shoes of some of those responders who were there. Some of them are volunteers, some of them are top-tier professionals, and everything in between. You know what it’s like to be in a number of those shoes. From a psychological perspective, with the role that you hold now, what goes through your mind?

00:25:30:23 – 00:26:37:00
Ryan Collyer: From– I’ll talk about a first responder lens: I mean, shut down. So, usually suppress the emotions so that I could do my job. That is just something that we’re trained to do. We talked about that. As a layperson, I’ve attended to a number of different, other, you know, trauma or injuries, before I got into EMS, and it’s panic, right? Like, “Oh, my word, I have not seen blood–” insert whatever graphic that you’re going to see. And from the volunteers, they’re not on there all the time. So they don’t, you know– they do an amazing job to get in there and stabilize and do the work that they do. But that’s not a common occurrence for, I would say, a volunteer firefighter or volunteer first-aider. That is something that you read about in the books. It’s something you go, “Okay, I think I can manage some of those things.” But even the seasoned paramedic, you know, I’ve got 23 years under my belt — when I read the synopsis of the call, there’s still a lot of those pieces that I would be going, “Okay, did I do this right?” You know, “What am I preparing for? How can I work through this space one step at a time?” So, it’s that mental rehearsal that’s constantly rolling over in your head, and there’s no time for emotions in something like that.

00:26:37:03 – 00:26:45:21
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: So these people who were part of this, if you were able to speak to each of them one on one, what would you tell them now in the aftermath?

00:26:45:23 – 00:27:32:23
Ryan Collyer: Knowing what I know now versus what I knew then– When I first started my career, I was brought up in the whole idea of “Put it in your boots. Don’t worry about it, don’t talk about it. You’ll be fine. Just go home and,” you know, “forget about it.” That’s the way I was brought up in the mental health side. Now, I look at this in this way that, you know, there’s that phrase that it’s okay to not be okay. I don’t necessarily like that because it’s, everybody’s going to have their own experience. And what I would say to anybody that attends a call like this is you’re going to take the time that you need to take to process that. Because of the call. I would suggest you go talk to somebody. Give yourself the compassion and self-compassion to actually feel what it’s like to be and have a human emotion around something that is really not something that we see often.

00:27:32:25 – 00:27:49:13
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: I would imagine that the types of psychological injuries inherent in the role of a responder, a first responder, firefighter — whoever — can be pretty nuanced and pretty specific. How is that?

00:27:49:16 – 00:29:32:09
Ryan Collyer: Sights, sounds, smells. It’s all of that mixed into a really interesting world where we don’t get trained in mental health. We have no understanding from the school perspective as what we’re about to go into. So it’s really good at the clinical practice. And I mean, I’ve worked with STARS medics and, you know, I’ve worked with a number of different doctors and stuff like that. It’s– we’re really good at the clinical practice, so we’re really good at diagnosing, doing our differential diagnosis, working through treatment plans, running protocols. But nobody ever says, “Hey, wait a moment. What you’re going to see is going to affect you. What you’re going to hear is going to affect you. What you smell…” and all of the things that we experience in that moment. And we’re really good at disconnecting into the clinical world. And what I mean by that, and I talked about it with our practitioners that I worked with, is that we’re really good at running the protocols. We can shut off our emotions — and I talked about this before I took the BOS program, so it’s kind of interesting how things come around — but we’re really good at actually going into the space of clinical practice. The problem is, is that we’re not trained to really kind of reflect on our experience after the fact. And if we do, it’s usually from self blame. I can actually say that, you know, it’s the “I could have done this different. I should have done this different, I’m going to do this different.” And then we tend to beat ourselves up about what we did or didn’t do, even though the outcome was predicted. Right? There’s some times where I was walking home and got left sitting there wondering, going, “If I would have just done something different, would the outcome be different? Would they have survived or what? Would they have a more positive outcome?” And we’re not trained, we’re not trained in any of that from the school level. So we go through the trajectory of our career hoping that we’re going to be okay and we’re not in some way, shape or form.

00:29:32:11 – 00:29:34:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And you guys are working hard to change that.

00:29:34:09 – 00:30:46:27
Ryan Collyer: We are. We’re doing– Really I think the work that we’re doing now, from a research perspective, I think is really, really cutting edge, to be honest with you. There’s nothing that I have been able to be a part of as far as courses or trainings or mental health training that really is grounded in this, the depth of research that we’re in right now. But I mean, from my perspective as a first responder, it’s like, when I took the BOS program back in 2018, it was part of the Wounded Warriors Canada funding, and that was for some of the learnings– I walked out of that, going, “Why? Why didn’t I know this sooner?” Right? So, from a cutting-edge perspective, and Dr. McElheran will talk about the research and some of the stuff, I’m sure, but I think from a research base, we always frame anything we do from a clinical practice in best practices and research and what is the fun[damental]– And we change protocols all the time because things change. This has never been researched, I think, from my perspective, in the depth the way that it has, and its leading-edge as far as mental health training and literacy. You know, we’re trained so well in the clinical world that we just apply that across the span of our lives so that when we get into those spaces and we start to feel the feels, it’s really scary. But we need more tools in our tool chest.

00:30:47:02 – 00:30:47:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah.

00:30:47:09 – 00:30:59:26
Ryan Collyer: So that when we start to suffer or when we experience an occupational stress injury, we have some tools there. Emotional intelligence is a part of that. You know, whatever those key pieces are, we can actually start to put them in place.

00:30:59:29 – 00:31:18:11
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You know, for someone who didn’t take advantage of the opportunities to debrief or talk to their peers or, in whatever way, kind of work through this after it happened– we’ll talk about this incident: What sort of symptoms or signs do we start to see? What does the family start to see? The coworkers? What does their life look like?

00:31:18:13 – 00:32:33:14
Ryan Collyer: Well, I mean, from a peer support lens, we had a document when I was working for peer support with Alberta Health Services that really kind of outlined the physical symptoms of an adverse stress reaction or an ongoing one. You know, nausea, lack of sleep, avoidance behaviours. Meaning, “I’m going to drink a little bit,” and instead of having one glass of wine, I’m having half a bottle or a bottle. Not having conversations with my friends, isolating myself. Those are kind of some of the common themes that we start to see. And I exhibited them as well. When I would come home from a really difficult day on the job — and I worked predominantly in the downtown core of Calgary, so, you know, whether it’s a shooting, a stabbing, a difficult call — I would isolate myself and I wouldn’t talk to my spouse. And what that did is created a disconnection between myself and my spouse for, on and off, for years. And it was just a matter of understanding that it is okay to say, “Hey, I’m struggling right now.” I used to isolate my spouse. I wouldn’t tell her what happened. “No, everything’s good, everything’s fine.” Right? And when good is good, it’s not good. And when I’m fine, I’m not fine. So that’s kind of some of the pieces that I’ve noticed as far as, like, the symptoms, the physical symptoms — nausea, lack of sleep; you can get autoimmune if you’ve got stress reactions for a long time; and then just that disconnection and behavioural pieces.

00:32:33:16 – 00:32:37:07
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: People listening to this, they say, “You know what? I do need help.”

00:32:37:10 – 00:32:37:17
Ryan Collyer: Yeah.

00:32:37:18 – 00:32:44:17
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Is there, like, a common number that somebody can call? What kind of advice would you say to anybody listening to this who might want to reach out for help?

00:32:44:19 – 00:33:41:10
Ryan Collyer: If you have a peer support network, access that first. That would probably be where I start. Most peer support networks across the province, regardless of whatever public safety personnel you work with, have their own connections. Most of them have an EFAP. For me, I would say look for and seek out somebody that’s trained with first responders. As far as a clinician is concerned, put them in your back pocket. Right? I think anybody that’s in this field should have a psychologist actually on speed dial. And you go see them on a regular basis. And that’s the biggest– you know, normalize it. Go seek help when you need it. Talk to your peer support. Talk to your family. Let them know that you’re suffering or struggling. Seek out those people that can actually help you walk through this in a really meaningful way. Because I look at this as an opportunity for growth. It’s not easy. It’s going to open up a lot of boxes that we tend to pack away and put on shelves, but it’s probably the best work you’re going to do.

00:33:41:12 – 00:33:41:26
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Very good.

00:33:42:02 – 00:33:42:17
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Wonderful.

00:33:42:17 – 00:33:44:20
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Thank you. Is there anything else you want to add while you’ve got the microphone in front of you?

00:33:44:22 – 00:33:47:05
Ryan Collyer: Nothing at all. Appreciate being here.

00:33:47:07 – 00:33:47:18
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: All right.

00:33:47:19 – 00:33:48:07
Co-host Deborah Tetley: That was awesome.

00:33:48:07 – 00:33:48:22
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Thanks, Ryan.

00:33:48:24 – 00:33:55:19
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Thanks so much.

00:33:55:21 – 00:34:23:24
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of Mission Ready Season 2, presented by ARC Resources. And thanks to Dr. McElheran and Ryan Collyer for putting it into perspective. If you feel like you need mental health support, please find help. If your employer offers resources, start there. Or, simply search online. I typed “mental health hotline Canada” into a search engine and immediately found a federal government web page pointing to a large selection of resources. The point is, there are a lot of people waiting to help.

00:34:23:26 – 00:34:45:28
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Thanks once again to everyone who made Season 2 of Mission Ready possible. This has been an enriching and uplifting experience to be part of, and we hope that you feel the same way and that you came away from this learning a little bit more about STARS, the people behind the mission, and the work that we do. And as always, if you want to get involved and be a stars ally, head to stars.ca. Until next time, thanks for listening.

00:00:01:29 – 00:00:33:15
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Before we start, a word of caution. As you know, STARS provides pre-hospital care for critically ill and injured patients who have sustained severe trauma or debilitating illnesses. It’s what we do. As such, some of the details in this podcast may be difficult for some listeners. The STARS mission being explored this season involves graphic descriptions of physical injuries to a youth. Psychological impacts are also detailed. The patient’s family and supporters have generously allowed us to tell this story as a personalized insight into STARS.

00:00:33:17 – 00:01:06:18
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And for that, we are genuinely grateful. The community, and everyone else who was involved, welcomed us with open arms to help us tell this story. Having spent time with about 20 people researching it and recording interviews on the phone, virtually, in studio, and right at the scene of the incident, we can tell you this: our conversations were raw and candid, and as such, some of the details uncomfortable. For this podcast, we’ve endeavoured to tell the story accurately without being too sensational. Still, listener discretion is advised.

00:01:06:20 – 00:01:20:11
Warren Peters: Pretty difficult at first just to come to grips with it. Just that it happened in the first place, and was definitely things that are bothered for a while. And I mean, they probably will for maybe years, I don’t know.

00:01:20:14 – 00:01:23:15
Darcy McKay: Those calls stay with you. They’re a burden.

00:01:23:17 – 00:01:30:08
Kayla Burrell: You’ll never get those images out of your brain completely. But you learn to live with it.

00:01:30:10 – 00:01:36:02
Yves Bolduc: But if you keep everything inside, you never talk about it, it’s just going to keep on messing with you.

00:01:36:05 – 00:01:43:23
Shae Evans: Your mental health is so important to protect. And if you don’t, it can be super damaging for a very long time.

00:01:43:26 – 00:01:58:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Welcome to Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources. This STARS podcast breaks down in detail one mission each season to give you a stronger understanding of how we provide critical care anywhere, and what happens before and after the mission. I’m Deborah Tetley.

00:01:58:29 – 00:02:16:13
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And I’m Lyle Aspinall. In Season 2, we’re analyzing an emergency response to a traumatic incident where a teenager was run over by an industrial-sized riding lawnmower in Laird, Saskatchewan. This is Episode 7: Processing Trauma — Our final installment in this story.

00:02:16:15 – 00:02:51:23
Co-host Deborah Tetley: By now, you know Draidyn Wollmann is moving forward with positivity after almost losing his life to a riding lawnmower. You’ve heard from many people who were involved in giving him that second chance. And as you can imagine, every one of these people was psychologically impacted. One of our core values at STARS is safety and it’s always top of mind. Safety also refers to mental health, which was a common topic of discussion as we interviewed for this story. So, in this episode, we’re hearing from numerous people who are still processing their trauma.

00:02:51:26 – 00:02:55:04
Warren Peters: …It’s a zero-turn mower there. It’s just operated by the…

00:02:55:07 – 00:03:10:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: You might remember Warren Peters from previous episodes. He’s the foreman in Laird and was Draidyn’s boss when the incident happened. Warren was very generous with his time for us and very gracious even when we asked him how he was coping as he stood outside the Laird Village office a year later.

00:03:10:06 – 00:03:19:21
Warren Peters: Yeah, it’s, pretty difficult at first just to come to grips with it in the first place, I guess.

00:03:19:23 – 00:03:28:02
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Before we ever met him in person, Warren told Deb on the phone that knowing the Wollmann family as well as he did made things that much more difficult.

00:03:28:05 – 00:04:44:07
Warren Peters: So, you know, it was kind of a– we had joked about it even before that: It’s like a family business. Because, yeah, his mother worked for the town for, was it two years? Two summers? And then, the other son had worked just the previous summer. So it was like he was going to, you know, he was next in line, kind of thing. So yeah, I mean, I know them well and that’s maybe what, you know, eventually after that, what, you know, hit me more was just because it’s someone I knew, just the fact or the situation happened, you know. It could have been anyone else, I wouldn’t have known who it was– it wouldn’t have nearly hit me that hard, I’m sure. I just, I mean, I can handle, you know– blood and things like that do not affect me that much. So, but just who it was, I knew them, I mean, I know we– he just lives right down the street from me a couple houses. So, yeah, that’s, uh… still dealing with that a little bit for sure. Something that will probably always kind of be there too. Probably just that moment of finding him there, that was kind of like, ugh, hard to believe.

00:04:44:09 – 00:04:54:10
Co-host Deborah Tetley: At STARS, we have a peer support program, which is automatically triggered whenever our crews attend a certain threshold of traumatic event. Draidyn’s was one such event.

00:04:54:12 – 00:04:58:09
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: It’s important to talk about those calls to get those feelings out.

00:04:58:12 – 00:05:04:16
Co-host Deborah Tetley: That’s Glen Pilon, Draidyn’s flight paramedic from STARS who has been in paramedicine for three decades.

00:05:04:19 – 00:05:53:10
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: I see it as a vault. A lot of those calls that I’ve done where you go to a high school shooting, or you go to a plane crash, or you go to a Humboldt Broncos bus crash, or you go to something like this where Draidyn’s trapped, or somebody’s trapped in a head-on collision — all those calls that you do, they get put into a vault in your mind, and you spin the lock on them, right? And they just, sometimes it can get overwhelming. There’s no more room for those calls in the vault because the vault is full. And so you need to go and you need to talk about them with a professional, because a lot of the stuff that we see are very traumatic and calls that can affect your mental health. So, not only do you have to get lots of sleep and eat right and eat healthy and exercise, but you also have to take care of your mind as well.

00:05:53:13 – 00:06:01:18
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Bailey Sinclair, the flight nurse who was on her very first solo shift with STARS when Draidyn’s mission occurred, was amazed by the support provided to her.

00:06:01:21 – 00:06:30:08
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: Everybody on our air medical crew that day was reached out to by a different member of the peer support team. But also, just, I think our colleagues in those kinds of calls are so important too. I remember every colleague I worked with was like, “Hey, how are you doing? Do you want to talk about it?” Asking questions, like, making sure we were okay. So, it’s just so nice to work in such a supportive environment where everybody’s really looking out for you when you’ve got an experience like that.

00:06:30:11 – 00:06:38:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yves Bolduc, one of the pilots who flew to Draidyn’s side, is part of our Saskatoon base’s peer support team and stressed its importance.

00:06:38:24 – 00:06:44:12
Yves Bolduc: But if you to keep everything inside, if you never talk about it, it’s just going to keep on messing with you.

00:06:44:15 – 00:06:54:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: How proud are you, Yves, of the peer support program that we have here? And how does it compare, let’s say, to, I don’t know, the military?

00:06:54:14 – 00:07:53:28
Yves Bolduc: Military, there was– it was non-existent. You know, as you can imagine, you know, tough it out, you know, and, you know, that’s something you don’t think about. That was your typical thing that I grew up with in the military. You just didn’t talk about your feelings, you know? If not, that was a sign of weakness and whatnot. Since I’ve been at STARS it’s so — you know, with the education and everything else, learning about what is, what creates — In fact, it takes courage for people to actually, you know, come out and talk to somebody else and open up. You know, it takes courage for that. It takes trust, you know, in somebody else as well, knowing that everybody else will have your back. And that’s how we feel here at STARS, and I think it feels like this in each base as well, is that everybody’s got your back. Everybody’s here, you know, for each other. Everybody’s looking out for each other’s interests because we are team. When we go somewhere on a call, it’s not about us. It’s about the patient.

00:07:54:01 – 00:08:07:02
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You’ll recall from previous episodes, we spoke with Shae Evans, who was helping coordinate the logistics. Despite handling hundreds of calls in her time with the STARS Emergency Link Centre, Draidyn’s story stands out in her memory.

00:08:07:04 – 00:08:10:14
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Shae, when did you learn that Draidyn made it?

00:08:10:17 – 00:08:11:26
Shae Evans: When you emailed me.

00:08:11:28 – 00:08:12:12
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Really?

00:08:12:13 – 00:08:13:03
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Oh, wow.

00:08:13:03 – 00:08:17:06
Shae Evans: Yeah, I didn’t… yeah, I… yeah.

00:08:17:08 – 00:08:35:11
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Due to patient privacy regulations, our crews often don’t know a person’s outcome after transferring care at hospital, unless that patient reaches out to us later, which is how we came to know Draidyn. But Shae remembers being impacted by his mission when it first came across her screen that afternoon in July 2022.

00:08:35:13 – 00:08:49:12
Shae Evans: I remember this call and it was such, like, a horrific call. And I was just, like, I can’t even imagine, like, the scene. And you feel for your medical crew, right? Like, we read the words, like, we understand it, but our medical crew is out there seeing it. And so we kind of feel for them.

00:08:49:14 – 00:08:58:13
Co-host Deborah Tetley: But you’ve got to be a pretty strong person to sit in that chair. And you talked about that, all the training and whatnot. But you can’t train how to be a strong person.

00:08:58:15 – 00:08:58:22
Shae Evans: Yeah.

00:08:58:22 – 00:09:00:25
Co-host Deborah Tetley: It takes a special person to do this job.

00:09:00:26 – 00:09:35:04
Shae Evans: You learn quickly if you can. And, you know, it’s no hard thing if– or, not like a hard fault if you can’t. Like, if you can’t do it, it’s best that you don’t because you don’t want to push that kind of thing. Like, your mental health is so important to protect. And if you don’t, it can be super damaging for very long time. Like, you don’t want to have, you know, that. So it’s not a problem if it’s not meant for you. You know, we’ve had people who come in and they get their training and then they sit in the chair and they hear the first call, and then they don’t show up the next day. They’re like, “I’m good,” and that’s okay. It’s for the best, you know, don’t push it.

00:09:35:07 – 00:09:47:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: So what about all of the other emergency service responders who were there, the ones who might not have an employer-backed peer support program? After all, according to volunteer first responder Kevin Burrell, it’s the kind of sight that no one would ever expect to see.

00:09:47:06 – 00:09:51:15
Kevin Burrell: It was too unreal to be real.

00:09:51:18 – 00:10:04:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: My understanding is that there was a, like, kind of a group debrief afterward. I’m just wondering if you participated in that, and if you’ve taken any steps to kind of take care of your mental health along the way.

00:10:04:12 – 00:10:59:01
Kevin Burrell: Yeah, I did. the Waldheim group and the Laird group and the Rosthern paramedics all got together at the Laird Fire Hall immediately after the call. The Laird group, they attend a lot fewer calls than we did in Waldheim. They didn’t have the extrication tools. They didn’t do a lot of vehicle accidents. That kind of stuff. So we had seen a lot more of the traumatic calls than they had. Working through that, we’ve had people in to counsel our group in the past, and we made a regular habit of debriefing after any serious call. So, I had more experience at that. So, Chris asked me to lead the debrief. So, we just kind of went around the room and I had everybody just kind of go through what happened from their perspective. Once we got through the room, we had just a small discussion on mental health and how to look for the signs afterwards, how it could be affecting you and maybe you don’t realize it.

00:10:59:03 – 00:11:06:19
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: The Chris he’s referring to is Laird fire chief Chris Dennis, who took the focus on mental health one step further, organizing a group session later on.

00:11:06:21 – 00:11:11:28
Chris Dennis: I was one of the ones that initiated the CISM into our town.

00:11:12:00 – 00:11:20:09
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: CISM stands for Critical Incident Stress Management and is a widely recognized intervention protocol focusing on psychological injuries caused by traumatic events.

00:11:20:12 – 00:11:48:05
Chris Dennis: They came in and did a debriefing. I told all my firefighters that it was pretty much mandatory. You had to be there. If you didn’t want to be there, I totally understood it, but you needed to be there. And pretty much every one of them was there. All the Waldheim crew that was on scene that day were there. And Christine actually made a– showed up and said thank you to everybody that that was there and helped out.

00:11:48:07 – 00:11:53:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Christine is Draidyn’s mom and is also a volunteer firefighter and first responder in her community.

00:11:53:28 – 00:12:05:11
Kevin Burrell: When Draidyn was released from the hospital, Chrissy and Draidyn and her other son came to our fire hall in Waldheim and told us about how everything went and we got to talk with them. That was awesome.

00:12:05:13 – 00:12:15:16
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Kevin’s wife, Kayla Burrell, was another first responder by Draidyn’s side. She’d held the bag of blood that was transfusing into him while he was still trapped under the mower.

00:12:15:19 – 00:12:57:05
Kayla Burrell: Draidyn living and being okay — and not just living, but living in happiness and having a bright future, really aids in the mental health journey because, you know, you’re not looking back. You’re not questioning what you could have done better or what you did wrong. And so we can be a little easier on ourselves as we walk through what is similar to, like, a grief process. You’ll never get those images, or maybe the fear, out of your brain completely, but you’ll learn to live with it. And debriefing after a call is really important, and confiding in your teammates is really important.

00:12:57:08 – 00:13:01:22
Co-host Deborah Tetley: She wasn’t able to attend that day Draidyn visited her fire hall, and she regrets it.

00:13:01:24 – 00:13:24:21
Kayla Burrell: We had prior engagements, and I was torn between what I should do, and I was like, “You know what? I’m doing okay.” And I shouldn’t have. Because it’s really important to be there in that safe place and realize that everybody else is going through the same thing and talking about it, because if you stuff it down, that’s where the injury comes in. I’ve taken the BOS training…

00:13:24:23 – 00:13:42:10
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: BOS stands for Before Operational Stress. It’s a program developed by Dr. Megan McElheran, who is a clinical psychologist. The program is designed for emergency responders to help them build proactive psychological tools. Doctor McElheran had a plea for that amazing demographic.

00:13:42:13 – 00:13:56:17
Dr. Megan McElheran: Please don’t treat yourself like a machine because you’re not. You know, you’re made of flesh and blood and bone and have a soul and are impacted by things. And that’s all the beautiful tapestry that makes us who we are. And so let’s honour that. Let’s respect that.

00:13:56:20 – 00:14:17:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: We spoke at length with Dr. McElheran and the former paramedic she hired to lead the BOS program about the unique aspects of mental health for emergency responders. It was a great conversation with a lot of important information. So, next week we’re going to release a bonus episode with that interview. For now, though, let’s get back to Kayla and her appreciation for having some coping mechanisms in place.

00:14:17:27 – 00:14:47:00
Kayla Burrell: And I loved the BOS program because it, like– it was practical: This is what’s happening in your brain, this is how it’s working. And once I knew that, it’s easier to go through the grief and feel the feelings and just understand the past, I guess. It just makes it easier. You’re not just overwhelmed and you don’t know why. You know, there’s answers. This is why, this is what your brain is doing.

00:14:47:00 – 00:14:51:01
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And now, a quick word from our Season 2 sponsor.

00:14:51:03 – 00:15:21:06
ARC Resources ad spot: As Canada’s third largest natural gas producer and the largest producer of condensate, ARC Resources is proud to play an important role in the responsible development of Canada’s energy resources in delivering those resources. Safety is the number one priority, always, and it’s that core value that makes ARC’s partnership with STARS a natural fit. It’s our shared goal to ensure that everyone arrives home safely at the end of the day. Learn more about how ARC is leading the way for safe and responsible energy development at arcresources.com.

00:15:21:06 – 00:15:28:14
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Welcome back.

00:15:28:16 – 00:15:43:24
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So now you have a sense of how Draidyn’s emergency responders were affected by this situation. But what about the Wollmann family directly? First, let’s talk to Sharon Kingston, the occupational therapist who has been guiding Draidyn through the early stages of his physical and mental rehabilitation.

00:15:43:27 – 00:16:05:02
Sharon Kingston: Everything about occupational therapy is breaking down the task to make it something that’s achievable for the client. Because yeah, it can be very defeating if you just see yourself coming in and doing something that you’re not having success with. So, you have to build on the small little pieces first, and then progress forward to those larger pieces that bring the whole picture back together again.

00:16:05:10 – 00:16:17:11
Co-host Deborah Tetley: I think it’s interesting that you talked about the whole person, including mental health. Without, you know, revealing your personal conversations with Draidyn, how do you see his mental health and wellness recovery going?

00:16:17:14 – 00:17:05:29
Sharon Kingston: I would say really, really well. And I think a big part of it is — and you see— I see it with other clients as well — if they have good social supports: their family, their friends, those kinds of things — their recovery, it’s not that it’s easy, but it’s facilitated so much more by having those connections. If you’re very much alone or you don’t have good social supports in the community, it’s way more of a struggle. You don’t have anybody to talk to and unload to in terms of, “Okay, I’m having a rough day today.” Not having those people to talk to and converse with and try to sort through some of those things, because obviously his life has changed immensely. It’s just, how do I work through that? But he’s had great social supports — both his friend group, his family is amazing.

00:17:06:01 – 00:17:17:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, we couldn’t agree more. The more we dug into this story, the more we learned about the strong support network behind Draidyn. His mom, Christine, says it’s all part of an outlook that starts at home.

00:17:17:06 – 00:17:31:24
Christine Wollmann: I would just take every single day and just go with that day, and that’s all that I taught Draidyn too. And that, you know, we’re going to enjoy today and make every day positive.

00:17:31:26 – 00:17:45:10
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You know, that kind of gets me thinking about your family’s mental health. Is that how, you know, you leaned into self-care, was just taking it one day at a time? Or how did you make sure that everyone stayed emotionally healthy?

00:17:45:16 – 00:18:18:00
Christine Wollmann: Myself, with my boys, they are really open and pretty much tell me everything. We always have conversations when things go wrong or things are troubling, disappointments. I always try to tell them that, “Okay, we need to look at it in a positive way.” I’ve always taught them that the only person who can make you happy is you, and if it probably wasn’t for our faith, we probably wouldn’t be in the state that we are right now.

00:18:18:03 – 00:18:45:02
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: So what about Draidyn? After all, he’s the only one in this story whose injuries go beyond the psychological. He lost an arm and severely injured his chest and foot. In fact, he was still working through those injuries when we saw him in Laird a year after the incident. He’ll never be quite like he was for the first 16 years of his life. When he and his mom agreed to meet us in person behind the Laird Arena, we didn’t realize it would be the first time he’d stood back there since everything happened.

00:18:45:04 – 00:18:56:24
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Just to go back, your mom said that you guys hadn’t been back here since you first got out of hospital. So you live, like, I can almost see your house from where we’re standing. And you haven’t, you haven’t walked back here?

00:18:56:27 – 00:18:57:18
Draidyn Wollmann: Nope, never.

00:18:57:22 – 00:18:59:11
Co-host Deborah Tetley: How come?

00:18:59:13 – 00:19:06:13
Draidyn Wollmann: Let’s just say, too many memories, and that, of what happened.

00:19:06:16 – 00:19:12:25
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Well, I had no idea you guys hadn’t been back here, so thanks for walking back here. That’s super brave.

00:19:12:27 – 00:19:22:09
Draidyn Wollmann: It’s not that hard. You just… I’m just trying to keep a positive attitude around here. And… yeah.

00:19:22:11 – 00:19:25:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And according to a lot of the people we talked to, it seems to be working.

00:19:25:17 – 00:19:26:24
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Draidyn was pretty thankful.

00:19:26:25 – 00:19:27:19
Karleigh Dennis: Very positive.

00:19:27:19 – 00:19:29:14
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: So positive and happy and…

00:19:29:16 – 00:19:30:24
Daniel Kobylak: An amazing outlook on life.

00:19:30:25 – 00:19:32:14
Chris Dennis: This kid’s going to go places in life.

00:19:32:14 – 00:19:35:07
Kevin Burrell: I don’t know if I could be that positive if I was in the same position.

00:19:35:08 – 00:19:37:16
Sharon Kingston: He’s been a joy to work with, quite honestly.

00:19:37:17 – 00:19:41:14
Yves Bolduc: But that kid at this age to show that resiliency…

00:19:41:14 – 00:19:45:26
Chris Dennis: I don’t think there’ll be much that’ll slow him down now.

00:19:45:29 – 00:20:08:23
Co-host Deborah Tetley: When I first met Draidyn in person, it was at the place where his life changed forever. I was amazed by not only his willingness to share his story and his life-altering experience in this very personal way, but also by his positive outlook on life and his future. Draidyn’s not looking back, and I think we can all learn a lot from that perspective.

00:20:08:26 – 00:20:25:19
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And where does that come from? Where do you get this, this strength? I think that this is a significant, life-changing event, and you’re a teenager and, I feel, like, a whole bunch of stuff going on, and then suddenly you’re faced with this, but you’re pushing through. How do you do that?

00:20:25:21 – 00:20:40:20
Draidyn Wollmann: Think positive. And just keep looking forward, not the past, basically is what I do mostly. And I guess it’s just from hanging out with my friends too, of course

00:20:40:23 – 00:20:48:20
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Now, this was part of a video interview, and if you listen closely, you’ll hear his mom, off-camera, assertively clear her throat.

00:20:48:22 – 00:20:48:26
Christine Wollmann: (ahem)

00:20:48:26 – 00:20:52:02
Draidyn Wollmann: Yeah.

00:20:52:05 – 00:20:54:28
Co-host Deborah Tetley: I think you’re supposed to say “friends and family.”

00:20:55:00 – 00:20:57:14
Draidyn Wollmann: (laughing) Sorry, sorry.

00:20:57:17 – 00:20:59:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Do want to try that again?

00:20:59:23 – 00:21:18:16
Draidyn Wollmann: Yes, yes. Sorry, I forgot… ehh… And I guess what’s been keeping me positive is my friends and my family, they keep giving positivity to me, and that.

00:21:18:19 – 00:21:27:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: That isn’t to say his new journey is easy. It’s far from it. The first time we interviewed him, he told us point blank that he was tired of talking about the incident.

00:21:27:11 – 00:21:44:01
Draidyn Wollmann: To be honest, it’s sort of annoying-ish. Like, I don’t even really think about it and it makes me happy not thinking about it. But whenever it brings it up, it just, I don’t know, feels.. weird, I guess, is the word.

00:21:44:04 – 00:21:56:00
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah, his annoyance is understandable. His life has come to be defined by this moment, but when you meet Draidyn, you quickly realize he’s not interested in looking backward — he’s very excited about what lies ahead.

00:21:56:03 – 00:22:12:13
Draidyn Wollmann: After high school, I want to be a truck driver, truck across the whole entire country, and States too, if I take loads down there, and then go to college for starting up a business.

00:22:12:15 – 00:22:42:12
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, Draidyn has big plans for his future. In fact, while we were editing this episode, his mom sent me a video of a new high-tech prosthetic that he was excited to be getting soon. Point is, he’s looking forward, not backward. Now, a few moments ago, you heard Draidyn tell us that our visit with him was the first time he had walked in the location of his incident since it occurred. But interestingly, although it was the first time he had walked back there, it wasn’t the first time he had been back there.

00:22:42:14 – 00:22:55:00
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So tell us about the day that Draidyn was finally discharged from hospital. What was that like? What was it like thinking about Draidyn’s future, what his life would look like slightly altered now?

00:22:55:02 – 00:24:36:19
Christine Wollmann: We just took one day at a time. Like, I got to bring him home in between. We got to take a weekend pass, so I let him drive around town and in the car. I want to say we’re going, like, maybe 20, 15, you know, not going very fast, just cruising — and he asked if he could go to the back of the arena. And I said, “Of course you can.” So, we went there and he sat and we parked in the back of the arena there. And it was amazing. He asked where everything was. I told him exactly where his shoe was, I told him where the lawnmower was, how it was placed, where the fire truck was, where the ambulance was, where STARS landed, and then, it was such a calm — I want to say it was a Saturday evening, like it wasn’t dark — we rolled down the windows and there was, like— all you could hear was just the wind through the trees. There was no dogs barking. It was just so nice and calm. And I told him, I said that, “Let’s close our eyes and let’s make this place into a positive place.” So, we did that, and then it was kind of cool when we were listening through the wind, through the trees, and I said, “Doesn’t that sound like the ocean touching the shore?” And he goes, “Yeah, it sounds really cool!”

00:24:36:21 – 00:25:01:02
Draidyn Wollmann: Yeah, I sort of thought about it, like, listening to the waves crash on the beach, I guess. Pretending I was on the beach in Vancouver, looking over the sunset. And I sort of made peace with that area where my accident happened.

00:25:01:05 – 00:25:22:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: (sound of wind and ocean waves)

00:25:29:12 – 00:25:46:21
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And that’s a wrap on Season 2 of Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources. Thank you to everyone who listened, and thank you especially to everyone who helped us tell this story. From the STARS crew to the various emergency responders involved along the way, to the community of Laird, and especially to the Wollmann family for being so accommodating.

00:25:46:24 – 00:26:00:24
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You know, I just have to say, I’m amazed at how generous this teenager has been. You and I both have teenagers, and I just, you know, the tiniest thing sets them off sometimes, like many teens. And…

00:26:00:29 – 00:26:02:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: It can be tough to be a teenager.

00:26:02:03 – 00:26:44:11
Co-host Deborah Tetley: It is tough to be a teenager. And then you take this life-altering incident and, you know, he’s got these hopes and dreams, he’s got this summer job because he wants to save for a car. And all of that just, you know, almost– you’d think it would vanish because of this incident that he’s been through. But that’s not the case. He stays positive, he stays focused, he looks forward. And I just I remember you told me about this kid after the VIP visit, and I thought, “Wow, he sounds interesting.” But he’s more than that. He’s remarkable. We can’t overemphasize how positive this kid is in that– many times, you and I looked at each other and were like, “Wow, this is incredible.”

00:26:44:14 – 00:27:29:29
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And in the times that I’ve met him, I was always amazed that he just never complained about any of it. At least not that I got to see. He would show us his prosthetic arm, how it worked. I saw him illustrate both for you and I and for the crews at the STARS hangar, he happily illustrated how the prosthetic arm worked, and he was more than happy to answer questions and ask questions. And he just didn’t hide anything. He didn’t complain. And when we met him in Laird, he just seemed like any other kid, you know, any other kid out in a rural community working on his car with his grandpa. You know, if we weren’t talking about the story, it would have looked like any other scene. And it was just so remarkable what he has come through and the attitude that he’s taken.

00:27:30:01 – 00:27:51:20
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, from beginning to end, just meeting this teenager, meeting the family, meeting the people — I mean, there’s been tears sitting right here in this studio just because of the heavy, heavy material. And, what an honour and a privilege to have been part of this story. I’ll never forget Draidyn.

00:27:51:22 – 00:28:04:23
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, me neither. You know, although this is the last episode where we focus on Draidyn’s story explicitly, there is a bonus episode coming where we have an impactful conversation with a couple of experts whose research is specifically about mental health and emergency responders.

00:28:04:25 – 00:28:16:13
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And, listeners, if you liked this season of Mission Ready, go back and check out Season 1 where Lyle and I tell the story of STARS Very Important Patient Marcia Birkigt. This woman survived a cougar attack.

00:28:16:16 – 00:28:31:17
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, and as always, thanks to Kaiya Gamble, the young musical prodigy who created our theme music. Her career is really taking off right now. Seriously, you want to check it out. Check her out on social media, at kaiyagamble.com, and by the way, both of her parents used to work for STARS.

00:28:31:19 – 00:28:43:18
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And remember, STARS is a physician-led, not-for-profit organization that can only exist because of your support. Please get involved at stars.ca. Until next time, thanks for listening.

00:00:02:00 – 00:00:33:20
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Before we start, a word of caution. As you know, STARS provides pre-hospital care for critically ill and injured patients who have sustained severe trauma or debilitating illnesses. It’s what we do. As such, some of the details in this podcast may be difficult for some listeners. The STARS mission being explored this season involves graphic descriptions of physical injuries to a youth. Psychological impacts are also detailed. The patient’s family and supporters have generously allowed us to tell this story as a personalized insight into STARS.

00:00:33:23 – 00:01:08:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And for that, we are genuinely grateful. The community, and everyone else who was involved, welcomed us with open arms to help us tell this story. Having spent time with about 20 people researching it and recording interviews on the phone, virtually, in studio, and right at the scene of the incident, we can tell you this: our conversations were raw and candid, and as such, some of the details uncomfortable. For this podcast, we’ve endeavoured to tell the story accurately without being too sensational. Still, listener discretion is advised.

00:01:08:07 – 00:01:20:11
Chris Dennis: This kid’s a fighter. Like, this kid’s going to go places in life. He went to the end and back, and he’s there for it, right? I don’t think there’ll be much that will slow him down now.

00:01:20:14 – 00:01:24:10
Kevin Burrell: I don’t know if I could be that positive if I was in the same position.

00:01:24:12 – 00:01:35:13
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: Draidyn coming back to visit is just so important for us, because it helps us as air medical crew to see why what we do matters.

00:01:35:15 – 00:01:44:09
Yves Bolduc: What I’ve seen since I’ve been at STARS is that STARS gives hope to a lot of families that otherwise, before, they were not able to get that hope.

00:01:44:11 – 00:01:59:15
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Welcome to Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources. This STARS podcast breaks down in detail one mission each season to give you a stronger understanding of how we provide critical care anywhere, and what happens before and after the mission. I’m Deborah Tetley.

00:01:59:17 – 00:02:15:26
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And I’m Lyle Aspinall. In Season 2, we’re analyzing an emergency response to a traumatic incident where a teenager was run over by an industrial-sized riding lawnmower in Laird, Saskatchewan. This is Episode 6: Recovery and Reunion.

00:02:15:29 – 00:02:39:27
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: In the last episode, you heard teenager Draidyn Wollmann talk about what happened after being run over by a riding lawnmower he was operating and about his recovery since then. Today we are widening that view of his recovery because hearing it from those around him is inspirational. To do that, let’s pick it up a few days after the incident, when he’s just come out of an induced coma and is starting to communicate with friends at home.

00:02:39:29 – 00:02:50:23
Karleigh Dennis: I was like, Okay, he’s good, he’ll live. But let’s just hope he, you know, can still actually function right and walk and, you know, use his arms.

00:02:50:25 – 00:03:02:10
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: That’s Karleigh Dennis, referring to when she first heard from Draidyn while he was still in the hospital. Remember, Karleigh is the one who first alerted Draidyn’s boss that he was missing in the first place, setting off the search that led to his life being saved.

00:03:02:12 – 00:03:06:10
Karleigh Dennis: Until I found out his arm got amputated.

00:03:06:12 – 00:03:15:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, Draidyn had lost his left arm at the elbow, but even in the earliest moments of that new reality, there were already signs of the positive attitude he would take.

00:03:15:05 – 00:03:24:11
Karleigh Dennis: When I first saw him, it was a picture of him lying in his hospital bed with his arm bandaged up, and he was giving a thumbs up.

00:03:24:13 – 00:03:31:00
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Now, that doesn’t mean it was easy for him when he first found out. He said as much when we inquired about those early moments.

00:03:31:03 – 00:03:37:24
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Do you remember what it was like the first time that you actually looked and realized what a challenge lie had?

00:03:37:26 – 00:03:41:20
Draidyn Wollmann: I guess terrified and grossed out, I guess.

00:03:41:23 – 00:03:43:07
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And what about now?

00:03:43:10 – 00:03:45:25
Draidyn Wollmann: I’m okay now, I guess.

00:03:45:28 – 00:04:03:22
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: But understandably, it’s a roller coaster. Not only is he adjusting to life with a prosthetic arm, but when we last spoke with him, he was also still wearing a walking cast for his ankle injury, and clothing concealed his chest injury. But it’s a safe bet he was still healing there too. Point is, when the lows hit, they’re awful.

00:04:03:25 – 00:04:08:24
Draidyn Wollmann: Sometimes it just feels like you’re all alone, I guess, is the way to explain it.

00:04:08:27 – 00:04:16:29
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, that’s totally fair. But you know, there’s an underlying root of positivity to Draidyn that just seems to always shine through.

00:04:17:01 – 00:04:20:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: You were in the hospital for several weeks. How long was that?

00:04:20:05 – 00:04:24:13
Draidyn Wollmann: I was in the hospital for two months and four days.

00:04:24:15 – 00:04:30:02
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Let’s go to the end of that two months and four days, the day that you get to go home. Talk to me about that.

00:04:30:04 – 00:04:37:07
Draidyn Wollmann: Happy. Very happy. And I can say “goodbye, hospital” and “hello, home.”

00:04:37:10 – 00:05:01:24
Co-host Deborah Tetley: One of the reasons Lyle and I were so intrigued by Draidyn’s incident and wanted to share his story, was because we understood that it didn’t stop when STARS transferred his care at the hospital. That’s really only where it began, as it does for many patients. Recovery takes a village. And one of the professionals in Draidyn’s village, tasked with helping him adjust to life with a prosthetic arm, is Sharon Kingston.

00:05:01:26 – 00:05:39:06
Sharon Kingston: So, I’m an occupational therapist who works at Kinetic Rehabilitation Services, part of the Saskatchewan Health Authority. Draidyn was referred to me by a physiotherapist, or rehab medicine doctor, to see him for pre-prosthetic — so, before he got his artificial arm — and post-prosthetic training. So, I initially started seeing him in October before he got his prosthesis, to work with him regarding desensitization and maintaining movement in the residual, or the part of the arm that was still left after his amputation. And then things have progressed since here.

00:05:39:08 – 00:05:41:11
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: So you’ve known Draidyn for several months now?

00:05:41:14 – 00:05:42:17
Sharon Kingston: Oh, yes. Quite sometime.

00:05:42:20 – 00:05:44:11
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: What kind of a patient has he been for you?

00:05:44:14 – 00:06:17:17
Sharon Kingston: He is an– just a great kid. There’s so many factors that play into somebody’s recovery and rehabilitation after a traumatic injury like Draidyn’s had — obviously a very devastating thing. [He] has incredible family support, is incredibly motivated himself and has goals and aspirations of what he wants to be able to do, both for fun and just leisure pursuits, all those kinds of things. So he’s been very engaged and motivated in the process, so he’s been a joy to work with, quite honestly, yes.

00:06:17:19 – 00:06:22:10
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Can you give us kind of a high-level view of what you do with Draidyn and how you help him along?

00:06:22:11 – 00:08:54:09
Sharon Kingston: Sure. So, in that initial stage before the client, and especially Draidyn, gets his prosthesis, where the arm has had– or, sustained the laceration or the amputation, the nerves are very hypersensitive to touch. Obviously, if you have to wear a prosthesis, you have to have that arm be able to tolerate the touch, the pressure, the movement with the prosthesis on. So, we spend a lot of time on what kinds of things can you do to desensitize that. So, rubbing the amputated stump with different textures and materials, getting it used to vibration, to jarring, to bumping — all the things that you normally have happen during your day-to-day activities. And then also looking at how Draidyn could become as independent as possible prior to getting his prosthesis. So, what kinds of things could I give him advice on in terms of how he could do home activities or his current leisure pursuits? So, one of his things is, he’s very mechanical, and he really wanted to get back to being able to build motors and design little activities in terms of Lego. And because he only had one arm, everything was always swishing around for him and he couldn’t keep it stabilized in one place. So, we got him some rubberized matting called dycem, and he sent me a video clip that day like, Oh, I can do this again. And he was just so pumped about being able to get back. And he made this motor and showed me a little video clip of it actually working. So, that’s– it was really rewarding for me and for him in terms of him being able to, okay, I can still do the things that I did before my injury, I’m just going to have to change how I look at it again. And so he’s always been driven like that: Okay, what’s the next thing you want to work on? What’s the next thing? Like, being able to tie your shoelaces. So, that was one of the big things when he first got his prosthesis, okay. Not that a lot of 16-year-olds actually tie a bow in their shoelaces, but he definitely– it was one of those goals to be able to do two-handed things again. So, we start with something that’s fairly light and not a crazy amount of resistance. So, they can just build on those skills. And so being able to accomplish that, How do I tie a bow with using a prosthesis? How do I do two-handed activities at home? If I wanted to work on a car, can I do two wrenches at the same time? And how does that look? And what do I have to do?

00:08:54:11 – 00:09:05:13
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Those are great questions because just a year after his incident, Draidyn was beaming as he showed off his new pride and joy.

00:09:05:16 – 00:09:18:23
Draidyn Wollmann: She’s a 1958 Pontiac with a 283 V8 in her. Manual. Three on the tree. Very nice car.

00:09:18:25 – 00:09:30:17
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: It’s a 58 Pontiac Strato Chief, to be exact, the Canadian cousin to the Star Chief, and it really is a beauty. After changing the fuel filter with his grandpa, Draidyn gave Deb and I a ride.

00:09:30:17 – 00:09:54:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: …and I’m gonna roll down a window to the side…

00:09:54:15 – 00:09:56:13
Co-host Deborah Tetley: …oh, yeah, look at that ashtray, hey? That’s crazy.

00:09:56:13 – 00:09:56:14
Draidyn Wollmann: Ready?

00:09:56:14 – 00:09:56:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yep.

00:09:56:15 – 00:09:56:20
Christine Wollmann: Put it in reverse. You sure it’s in there?

00:09:57:00 – 00:10:05:02
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: I’ve got to say, watching Draidyn work through the gears on a manual transmission is a great view into the kind of determination his occupational therapist, Sharon, sees in him.

00:10:05:04 – 00:10:44:20
Sharon Kingston: It’s not an automatic. It’s a standard. So, just all those things. So, he sees himself as, Yeah, I’m going to go on, I’m going to be what and do what I want to do in life. And so, having that kind of inner motivation and drive to do things like getting those little snippets, me driving my first car. Like, you know, he’ll send me an email with him in the car. It’s just, it’s very, very rewarding. And you can just see his motivation and drive to kind of, I’m going to do this thing. And yeah, I’ve been handed a bad lemon here, but I’m going to make the best damn lemonade ever out of this situation. So it’s very rewarding.

00:10:44:23 – 00:10:59:26
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And like she said earlier, he’s not doing it alone. As we researched this story, we kept finding more and more people who wanted to help us out. Many of them knew Draidyn personally, and we heard a lot of comments about Draidyn’s strength and support network. Laird fire chief Chris Dennis summarized it well:

00:10:59:29 – 00:11:22:02
Chris Dennis: Couldn’t ask for a better young man. Very– he’s got, like, a real old-man’s personality and and traits about him, right? Like, just watching him ride and — before the accident — watching him riding the lawnmower around, from a distance you would swear it was, like, a 60-some-year-old man riding the lawnmower, just how his demeanor is.

00:11:22:02 – 00:11:27:27
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: He saw Draidyn after his release from hospital early in the teen’s recovery period.

00:11:27:29 – 00:11:33:08
Chris Dennis: He had to have a special machine with him that provided suction for his chest.

00:11:33:08 – 00:11:43:00
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And, but when you saw him up and about, walking around, sure, he doesn’t have an arm and he has the suction on his chest, but he’s up and about and he’s walking around — What was going through your mind?

00:11:43:00 – 00:12:18:26
Chris Dennis: At that time? You know, like, this kid’s a fighter. That was– every time I see him is, is the thoughts that go through my mind is, this kid’s a fighter. Like, this kid’s going to go places in life. He went to, he went to the end and back, and he’s there for it, right? He’s a fighter that’s not going to give up in life. And he’s not going to not going to take no for an answer for stuff. I don’t think there’ll be much that’ll slow him down now.

00:12:18:29 – 00:12:30:11
Co-host Deborah Tetley: When you drive into Laird, a sleepy little village of just roughly 250 people stuck in the middle of smoothly flat Saskatchewan prairie, you’re greeted by a telling sign.

00:12:30:14 – 00:12:50:22
Christine Wollmann: Our sign when you first come into town, it says, “Welcome to Laird.” And then it says, “The community that pulls together.” And I can truly say that that happens, that when anything goes on, that we’re always, like, everybody’s always involved and we try to do our best to support everybody.

00:12:50:24 – 00:13:14:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You might recognize that voice from previous episodes. It’s Christine Wollmann, Draidyn’s mom, who was by Draidyn’s side before the firefighters even lifted the lawnmower off him, and who has been a rock for him throughout his recovery. First responder Kevin Burrell, who lived in nearby Waldheim when the incident occurred, knows Christine and was amazed by her strength and the community that has buoyed the Wollmann family all along.

00:13:14:15 – 00:13:19:15
Kevin Burrell: Yeah, through the whole thing. I don’t know how she does it. She—

00:13:19:18 – 00:13:21:16
Co-host Deborah Tetley: It’s true.

00:13:21:19 – 00:13:30:29
Kevin Burrell: Yeah, she’s an amazing person. She stayed so positive. The whole family did. And I, I don’t know if I could be that positive if I was in the same position.

00:13:31:02 – 00:13:39:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You know, did she have the town rally around? Did the family have the town rally around them? I know it’s a small place, but was there a lot of community support?

00:13:39:23 – 00:14:33:14
Kevin Burrell: Yeah, yeah, that was another amazing thing. The whole town got behind her and did what they needed to do. It was a week later, I was attending a golf tournament, Jordan Zacharias Golf Tournament. Jordan Zacharias was a girl from Waldheim that died of cancer while she was in high school. Her family started this fund because they wanted to help families that were going through what they went through. So, I’m at the golf tournament and I know the people that are on the board a little bit, because some of them are from Waldheim. And the golf tournament’s over — we had a great time; raised a lot of money for that cause — and I was talking to one of the people there and I said, “You know what? I don’t know if you know about this incident in Laird, but if anybody could use some help, I think they could.” A day later, I got a text from them that said, “We’re sending them a gas card.” They gave them enough so that Christine can drive to the hospital and back every day.

00:14:33:16 – 00:14:54:03
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And they weren’t the only ones to help out. A GoFundMe raised thousands to help cover expenses, while Christine, a single mom, was juggling work and Draidyn’s medical appointments in the city, which was a 45-minute drive away. On top of that, people began dropping off flowers at her house, where her other son, Kacetyn, who’s a couple of years older than Draidyn, was holding down the fort.

00:14:54:05 – 00:16:13:12
Christine Wollmann: Kacetyn said that at first it was a little overwhelming, but then he said that people came and— like, because they were bringing flowers, and so I posted on the thing, I said that I really enjoy the flowers, but I’m not going to be home to enjoy them. So, I said that if people would like to buy me flowers, they can buy me outside flowers, right, so that everybody can enjoy them. So, then there was people bringing flowers for that. So, I thought that was pretty cool because I always try to do my best to decorate my yard nice in the summer. And this was the one summer that I didn’t get to do that. And so it was nice to see other people helping out with doing something like that. And people would be dropping meals off for Kacetyn and we had a couple of friends who took Kacetyn in to feed him and whatnot, because it was— like, I was at the hospital [every] day. And then every second night, at first, I was coming home. And then after the ICU, then I pretty much stayed the whole week, and then I would just come home in the evening on the weekends and then come back during the day. But there were so many people that it was, it was amazing.

00:16:13:14 – 00:16:29:23
Co-host Deborah Tetley: One of those people was Karleigh Dennis, who you heard at the beginning of this episode. She’s a friend of Draidyn’s, and it was she who first alerted village foreman Warren Peters that Draidyn was missing, setting off the manhunt that led him to being saved in the nick of time. She was part of the hands-on effort to help out the Wollmann family.

00:16:29:25 – 00:16:54:17
Karleigh Dennis: Basically, Christine was living at the hospital almost, and because she took a lot of time off of work, and— basically, we did this thing where we put money in an envelope and we’d go around to every single house, donate money, and we’d give the envelope to Christine. Also for Kacetyn, too, because he’s 18 and he’s in school and working so. But he took time off work too, so.

00:16:54:19 – 00:17:01:10
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Wow. It’s pretty wild, but— Do you ever look and think, I can’t believe that I was a part of this?

00:17:01:13 – 00:17:04:01
Karleigh Dennis: Oh yeah, I do all the time.

00:17:04:04 – 00:17:09:20
Co-host Deborah Tetley: He’s really lucky that you were part of it. You could have just went and knocked on his door and went home and like,

00:17:09:20 – 00:17:10:06
Karleigh Dennis: Yeah.

00:17:10:09 – 00:17:11:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: That was that.

00:17:11:11 – 00:17:24:29
Karleigh Dennis: Yeah, no, I think to myself, like, if I didn’t see Warren or if I just didn’t talk to him or anything, that he— it would have gone bad, it would have been basically it for him. But I’m glad I did.

00:17:25:01 – 00:17:25:29
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So are the rest of us.

00:17:26:04 – 00:17:30:11
Karleigh Dennis: Yeah.

00:17:30:13 – 00:17:35:22
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And now, a quick word from our Season 2 sponsor.

00:17:35:25 – 00:18:11:17
ARC Resources ad spot: As Canada’s third largest natural gas producer and the largest producer of condensate, ARC Resources is proud to play an important role in the responsible development of Canada’s energy resources in delivering those resources. Safety is the number one priority, always, and it’s that core value that makes ARC’s partnership with STARS a natural fit. It’s our shared goal to ensure that everyone arrives home safely at the end of the day. Learn more about how ARC is leading the way for safe and responsible energy development at arcresources.com.

00:18:11:19 – 00:18:14:28
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Welcome back.

00:18:15:00 – 00:18:58:04
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Less than a year after his incident, Draidyn’s family hit the road to Saskatoon. As a STARS Very Important Patient, or VIP, he was ready to be reunited with his STARS crew members and take a tour of the hangar. Many people came with him, including a lot of the people you’ve met in this podcast. His mom, Karleigh, her dad the fire chief, Draidyn’s former boss, plus many others, like his brother Kacetyn and his grandpa. And there at the STARS base to greet him were his flight paramedic Glen Pilon, flight nurse Bailey Sinclair, pilot Yves Bolduc, and clinical operations manager Daniel Kobylak, the STARS flight paramedic who rerouted from volunteering at a STARS fundraiser to help with this call. Here’s how Glen remembers that visit.

00:18:58:06 – 00:19:17:00
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Pretty emotional. You got to try and hold the tears back, and you just want to go up and give them a hug. And because, you know deep down inside you that this could have turned out quite a bit different. It was happy, to say the least, that he was able to come back and see us at the base and to see the helicopter that he flew in.

00:19:17:02 – 00:19:21:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Absolutely. That was a big, big group that came in that day. Good support structure, that’s for sure.

00:19:21:18 – 00:19:24:19
Co-host Deborah Tetley: What did the family say to you? What did Draidyn say to you?

00:19:24:21 – 00:19:56:26
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Draidyn was pretty thankful. He started talking about the call very openly. He didn’t hold anything back. He spoke of things that he remembered from the call. He spoke of how he remembers landing on the helipad. He remembers going down to the emergency department. He remembers lots of voices around in the emergency room. To hear that from a patient that was that critical, it’s pretty, pretty amazing that he had that awareness of him.

00:19:56:29 – 00:20:07:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: As for Bailey, remember: this mission happened on her very first solo shift after weeks of intense training with STARS. And so Draidyn was just the second patient she cared for on that shift.

00:20:07:12 – 00:21:29:05
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: I feel like a call like this could definitely be one that might make or break your career, or really kind of test you whether this is something you still want to do. Whether you’re able to help people in those situations. And I think what this call did for me was just made me want to help more and more people. Like, I think it just made me hungrier to learn and grow. And just excited to see what this future in this career has for me, because I’m like, if we can save a life on every call, like, that’s a lot of lives saved. And I just think it’s a very amazing thing, what we can do. So I’m grateful for that call and how it went in getting to meet Draidyn and just all of the wonderful things that have come from it. So when Draidyn came in that day into the hangar, I remember feeling, before the visit, very nervous, unsure. I knew it could be a very emotional meeting because it was a very emotional call for me. However, I think to see him doing so well and to be so happy and excited to be there and to meet his crew, I think that took away all of my worries of the nervousness, and it was just such a fantastic moment to see Draidyn and how well he was doing.

00:21:29:07 – 00:21:37:06
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, he was fascinated — we talked about it: sitting in the back, sitting in the front — he was fascinated by a lot of it. What kind of questions was he asking you?

00:21:37:09 – 00:22:01:08
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: I remember Draidyn asking, like, where he was in the helicopter, where his mom was. He asked a bit about the equipment we used, the monitors, the ventilator, lots of different things like that. And he also definitely had a great interest in the helicopter itself, which thankfully, we had our pilots there to help answer some of those questions because they know a lot more about that stuff than I do.

00:22:01:10 – 00:22:06:06
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Draidyn and his brother Kacetyn grilled pilot Yves Bolduc with questions.

00:22:06:08 – 00:22:30:04
Draidyn Wollmann: Yeah, I was asking about if the helicopter had two engines to power the turbine engine, how to fire it up, how the stabilizers work, how fast it goes, how the medical kit works, how they loaded me in, and several other questions.

00:22:30:07 – 00:22:33:05
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mom Christine said she had to keep him in check.

00:22:33:08 – 00:23:04:28
Christine Wollmann: It’s just amazing that he just asked so many questions and even just sitting in the helicopter. And then he got to sit in the pilot’s seat, but I told him, “Don’t touch anything, it’s not a video game,” right? And it was funny because, like, even Kacetyn and Draidyn were talking with the pilot, and they’re like, I bet you I can tell you how you start that thing. And they knew exactly how to start it. It was pretty cool.

00:23:05:01 – 00:23:05:29
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: They’d been playing some simulators.

00:23:06:00 – 00:23:56:04
Christine Wollmann: Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty neat. He was actually in such great spirits. He, I guess, he was surprising the crew with how positive he was. And then Bailey had said that, “Yeah. Your mom was so calm she was a rock star.” It was nice to hear, but it was also amazing hearing all the details of all of the little things that they did. Because I was always curious about that ultrasound, because I thought it was so cool how it could hook up to your phone. So, I asked about that, and he told me exactly what he was looking at, and he said that he was looking at his lungs. They were going up and down and I thought that was so cool.

00:23:56:06 – 00:23:56:18
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Wow.

00:23:56:20 – 00:24:09:02
Christine Wollmann: And then they were just showing all of the technology in the helicopter and how everything is so compact. And, you know, it was just amazing.

00:24:09:05 – 00:24:31:14
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, a quick note on that for our listeners: Our helicopters are often compared to flying ICUs, and that’s a pretty accurate summary. Thanks to the support of our generous donors, we not only carry ultrasounds like Christine just talked about, but also a cardiac monitor, a portable blood analyzer and infusion pumps, a ventilator, and a lot more.

00:24:31:16 – 00:24:36:10
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You got to talk to Bailey. You got to talk to your son’s crew. And what do you say to them?

00:24:36:10 – 00:24:46:10
Christine Wollmann: I just thank them lots, you know? And basically, if it wasn’t for STARS Draidyn wouldn’t be alive. I know that for a fact.

00:24:46:12 – 00:24:47:06
Co-host Deborah Tetley: What makes you say that?

00:24:47:09 – 00:25:14:06
Christine Wollmann: Because he lost way too much blood. Way too much. Being a first responder and knowing the injuries and knowing afterwards all what had happened, STARS saved his life, like, and with everybody else involved. We all did our part throughout Draidyn’s journey. Everybody who has touched his life, right? We all— Even just giving him a positive attitude, right?

00:25:14:08 – 00:25:18:11
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah. And it starts with the first person who found him.

00:25:18:12 – 00:25:18:15
Christine Wollmann: Yeah.

00:25:18:16 – 00:25:35:29
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And continues right through to physio and therapy and all of that. And I’m just wondering, if you had a chance to talk to the donors who made Draidyn’s mission possible, what would you say?

00:25:36:01 – 00:25:47:03
Christine Wollmann: If we didn’t have STARS in our province, so many people’s lives would be different.

00:25:47:06 – 00:25:57:29
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Pilot Yves Bolduc made it a priority to attend the VIP visit at the base that day in Saskatoon. He was conscious going in of just how difficult it might be for the visiting family.

00:25:58:01 – 00:27:11:28
Yves Bolduc: So, it’s very neat when we see a VIP wanting to come back, you know, to STARS, to meet the crew. I make everything else, you know, possible, you know, just to make sure, you know, that you got to be there. Because it takes even courage for them — now the patient — you know, to be able to face the crew. The helicopter for them can be traumatic. For some other people, oh no, totally the opposite. I want to go and say thank you, right? And just to hear their story, because there’s healing in speaking. If you go to a traumatic event and whatnot, if you can find someone that you trust, just speaking would help your mind, you know, put things, you know, back in the files in the right place. But if you keep everything inside and you never talk about it, it’s just going to keep on messing with you. It’s so nice to be able– Like, for me, I feel like thank you, by saying thank you to those people, those VIPs that are coming in because you’re closing doors for us, right? We actually are seeing someone that made it. What I’ve seen since I’ve been at STARS is that STARS gives hope to a lot of families that otherwise, before, they were not able to get that hope.

00:27:12:00 – 00:27:17:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Bailey said VIP visits are just as valuable for STARS crew members as they are for the patients.

00:27:17:24 – 00:27:57:12
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: I think that Draidyn coming back to visit is just so important for us, because it helps us as air medical crew to see why what we do matters, like, that we are saving lives, that we are helping people move on to the next step of their journey. And I just think it’s so rewarding because sometimes you don’t always get to see the patient outcome or what happens. You’re just such a short part of their journey. But to see the full circle in his recovery, it just makes it so worthwhile what you’re doing, and it just is so rewarding to be able to help out people where they need it the most.

00:27:57:15 – 00:28:03:02
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Daniel Kobylak, the off-duty STARS paramedic who was called to help at the scene, echoed those thoughts.

00:28:03:05 – 00:28:25:00
Daniel Kobylak: I’m always in awe of our VIPs and how [much] of an amazing outlook on life they have and just how upbeat they are. And it’s always a good reminder to live life to the fullest, because these people, in a lot of cases, have been given a second chance at life. And they come with just such an amazing outlook on life after that. It’s great to see.

00:28:25:02 – 00:28:49:14
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Of all the STARS crew members who were at the scene of Draidyn’s accident, the only one who couldn’t make it to the reunion was Alex Parra, the safety pilot. We talked back in Episode 3 about how much he loved helping crew. He can be forgiven for not making it to the reunion — Alex had moved on to a different flying career overseas just days after Draidyn’s mission. But we were able to reach him online in Germany, and he had a message for Draidyn.

00:28:49:17 – 00:29:11:15
Alex Parra: Hopefully the kid can hear me. I say hi to him and I’m really glad to know that he is okay now. Knowing that he’s a VIP patient makes me feel really happy. Really happy that all that four times that I went back to the helicopter, running, out of breath, were really worth it. So, I’m happy to hear that.

00:29:11:17 – 00:29:17:17
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: On the next Mission Ready, the final episode in Season 2.

00:29:17:19 – 00:29:28:27
Warren Peters: Pretty difficult at first, just to come to grips with it. And definitely things that are bothered for a while. And I mean, they probably will for maybe years, I don’t know.

00:29:28:29 – 00:29:38:00
Darcy McKay: And that’s why I say mental health is so important. Those calls stay with you. They’re a burden. So, so important to have those coping mechanisms to talk to people.

00:29:38:02 – 00:29:45:00
Kayla Burrell: You’ll never get those images out of your brain completely, but you learn to live with it.

00:29:45:03 – 00:29:50:06
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources, is produced in-house by me, Deborah Tetley.

00:29:50:11 – 00:29:55:16
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And me, Lyle Aspinall. Watch video clips from this season at stars.ca/missionready.

00:29:55:23 – 00:30:12:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready contains original theme music by Kaiya Gamble, whose dad was a long time STARS pilot and whose mom was once a transport physician. Check her out at kaiyagamble.com. Please rate and review Mission Ready wherever you found it, and be sure to tell you friends about it. Also, check out Season 1

00:30:12:23 – 00:30:19:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Want to be a STARS ally? Get involved and support our mission by visiting stars.ca. Until next time, thanks for listening.

00:00:01:29 – 00:00:33:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Before we start, a word of caution. As you know, STARS provides pre-hospital care for critically ill and injured patients who have sustained severe trauma or debilitating illnesses. It’s what we do. As such, some of the details in this podcast may be difficult for some listeners. The STARS mission being explored this season involves graphic descriptions of physical injuries to a youth. Psychological impacts are also detailed. The patients, family, and supporters have generously allowed us to tell this story as a personalized insight into STARS.

00:00:33:15 – 00:01:06:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And for that, we are genuinely grateful. The community, and everyone else who was involved, welcomed us with open arms to help us tell this story. Having spent time with about 20 people researching it and recording interviews on the phone, virtually, in studio, and right at the scene of the incident, we can tell you this: our conversations were raw and candid, and as such, some of the details uncomfortable. For this podcast, we’ve endeavoured to tell the story accurately without being too sensational. Still, listener discretion is advised.

00:01:06:17 – 00:01:12:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You said something earlier that you were talking to yourself in your head. What were you saying?

00:01:13:00 – 00:01:33:05
Draidyn Wollmann: Well, I’m not going to “bleep” die. I’m not going to “bleep” die. I’m going to figure out how to get out of this. That’s what I was repeating to myself in my head. Stressful day.

00:01:33:08 – 00:01:48:08
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Welcome to Mission Ready presented by ARC Resources. This STARS podcast breaks down in detail one mission each season to give you a stronger understanding of how we provide critical care anywhere, and what happens before and after the mission. I’m Deborah Tetley.

00:01:48:11 – 00:02:04:28
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And I’m Lyle Aspinall. In Season 2, we’re analyzing an emergency response to a traumatic incident where a teenager was run over by an industrial-sized riding lawnmower in Laird, Saskatchewan. This is Episode 5: Draidyn’s story.

00:02:05:01 – 00:03:42:23
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: By now, you know Draidyn Wollmann survived being run over by an industrial lawnmower. That was thanks to the skills of emergency responders and a team of STARS critical care providers all working together. But you know who you haven’t heard from yet is Draidyn himself. And he remembers much of what happened after the lawnmower stopped on top of him. We had the opportunity to speak with him about it more than once. When Draidyn visited the STARS base with a large group of supporters to meet the crew members from his mission, those of us who were new to the story had our first glimpse into just how remarkable it was. So, later, Deb and I asked Draidyn and his mom, Christine, if we could focus on it in Season 2 of Mission Ready, since it would be a strong insight behind the scenes showing what STARS does to ensure a patient in need gets the best chance possible. They warmly agreed. So we first spoke virtually and then later in person at the very place where they said the accident happened. Which is why, in a few moments when you hear from Draidyn, you might notice subtle variations in the audio quality. It was the summer of 2023 when we spoke with him in person, just before he started Grade 11, and only a few days after the one-year anniversary of the incident. Now, understandably, he’s not a huge fan of reliving his life-changing moment, so we kept our probing light and focused our conversations more on what occurred after he became trapped under the lawnmower deck and his recovery since then. But we know you’ve got to be wondering how this whole thing even happened in the first place. For that, let’s go to the court record. Deb is going to read you a couple of quotes from the public transcript of the sentencing hearing between the Crown and the Village of Laird, which happened on July 10th, 2024. Citing an agreed statement of facts between the two, the transcript reads, quote:

00:03:42:25 – 00:04:01:00
Co-host Deborah Tetley: The mower is designed with several safety switches, including a seat safety switch that stops the power unit if the operator’s weight is not on the seat. The seat safety on the machine involved in the incident had been bypassed several years earlier, when the seat and its base were modified and replaced with a seat from another model.

00:04:01:05 – 00:04:07:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: End quote. And later in the transcript, when describing the incident itself, it says that when Draidyn, quote:

00:04:07:18 – 00:04:37:24
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Engaged the mower in a forward direction, it lurched, prompting the seat controls and engine cover to tilt backwards. He was then ejected from the back of the machine and landed on the ground. When this occurred, he believes that one of the steering controls was pulled back, causing the machine to reverse and turn. Because the seat safety switch had been bypassed, the mower was allowed to run without an operator in the seat. Draidyn was run over, and he became entangled and dragged beneath the rear of the cutting deck until the engine eventually stalled.

00:04:37:26 – 00:05:10:01
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: End quote. The sentencing hearing where those words were read related to regulatory charges pursuant to the Saskatchewan Employment Act and Occupational Health and Safety Regulations. Ultimately, the Village of Laird was fined a total of $150,000. So, now that you know how it happened, let’s return to the story of the emergency response. Here it is: Draidyn’s telling of his rescue and recovery.

00:05:10:03 – 00:05:16:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Okay, Deb, I’m gonna hit record… and both are recording. Go ahead, Deb.

00:05:16:07 – 00:05:17:10
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Hi, Draidyn. How are you?

00:05:17:17 – 00:05:18:25
Draidyn Wollmann: I’m good. How are you?

00:05:18:26 – 00:05:21:00
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You ready for another interview?

00:05:21:02 – 00:05:22:13
Draidyn Wollmann: Oh, sure. Why not?

00:05:22:14 – 00:05:34:02
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah. Why not? So maybe just take a couple of seconds and tell us why we’re at this location. Maybe show us the significance of why we’re here.

00:05:34:04 – 00:05:58:02
Draidyn Wollmann: Well, we’re here where my accident happened just a year before. Right around here is where I was stuck underneath the mower here, behind the Laird arena and the Laird curling rink.

00:05:58:05 – 00:06:16:08
Draidyn Wollmann: I was stuck here for an hour. No clouds. Just pure sun, and the light just beating down on me. Calling for help. And it was terrifying, let’s just say.

00:06:16:10 – 00:06:22:20
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You said something earlier that you were talking to yourself in your head. What were you saying?

00:06:22:23 – 00:06:38:20
Draidyn Wollmann: Well, I’m not going to “bleep” die. I’m not going to “bleep” die. I’m going to figure out how to get out of this. That’s what I was repeating to myself in my head.

00:06:38:22 – 00:06:41:07
Co-host Deborah Tetley: I’m assuming “bleep” is a bad word.

00:06:41:09 – 00:06:44:29
Draidyn Wollmann: Yes.

00:06:45:01 – 00:06:46:23
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Wow.

00:06:46:26 – 00:06:48:21
Draidyn Wollmann: Yeah.

00:06:48:23 – 00:06:53:13
Co-host Deborah Tetley: After this happened you said you laid there for about an hour until your boss found you.

00:06:53:14 – 00:06:54:18
Draidyn Wollmann: Yes. Correct.

00:06:54:20 – 00:07:02:00
Co-host Deborah Tetley: An hour is a very, very long time. What was happening in that hour.

00:07:02:02 – 00:07:55:13
Draidyn Wollmann: In that hour, I was figuring out what was going on and then– well, I was panicking a bit, and then I felt something was wrong with my arm, and my arm was chopped off with a bit of skin just hanging on to the rest of it. And also, I was trying to get myself unstuck because my left foot was stuck underneath the mower deck. It was jammed. My right foot was free, but part of it was… was on it. It was slowly cutting circulation on it. And I was trying to get myself free. And I was hearing weird, funny noises coming from my chest. And I thought, Did I get punctured? It was terrifying. Couldn’t see.

00:07:55:16 – 00:07:57:15
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Were you shouting out for help?

00:07:57:18 – 00:08:18:06
Draidyn Wollmann: Yes. I heard someone mowing that day. Every time he turned off his engine, I would try to yell for help, but it didn’t work. I thought I was going to die there. I thought, Am I going to die here? Am I already dead and I’m just cursed, you know, or something?

00:08:18:08 – 00:08:19:28
Co-host Deborah Tetley: How terrifying.

00:08:20:00 – 00:09:09:11
Draidyn Wollmann: Very terrifying. Between the– trying to fight for your life and… it’s just terrifying. Being very close to death, it’s one of the most terrifying things. No one can really explain how. It’s just terrifying. I was spitting on myself to keep myself cool and keep myself awake. Stressful, stressful day. Of course, the weight of the mower deck was slowing the blood that was coming out of my chest, and it was hard breathing. So I had to breathe through my mouth and my mouth was very dry.

00:09:09:14 – 00:09:18:22
Co-host Deborah Tetley: This is probably going to sound like a ridiculous question, but you haven’t mentioned anything about being in pain. Did– did it hurt? Were you in pain?

00:09:18:24 – 00:09:49:06
Draidyn Wollmann: Here’s the weird part: I had no pain. No pain. I sort of want to say I was in shock or something. Because I was doing some research — all this was after — that you, if you’re in shock, you feel no pain. So I want to say I was in shock, I guess, feeling no pain. But I was visual and I was fine. Well, sort of fine.

00:09:49:09 – 00:09:55:28
Co-host Deborah Tetley: This question might be tough to answer, but I feel like you’re mature enough for it.

00:09:56:00 – 00:09:56:13
Draidyn Wollmann: Okay.

00:09:56:16 – 00:10:09:03
Co-host Deborah Tetley: I know you were thinking about a lot of stuff out there. It seems like there’s a lot of heavy thoughts. And you wondered if you might die. Did you think about your mom, your family, your friends?

00:10:09:06 – 00:10:11:00
Draidyn Wollmann: Oh, yeah, I thought about that.

00:10:11:03 – 00:10:12:15
Co-host Deborah Tetley: What did you think about?

00:10:12:17 – 00:10:27:02
Draidyn Wollmann: I thought I was going to die here, not to live far enough in my life. All sorts of stuff you couldn’t imagine.

00:10:27:04 – 00:10:30:21
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Those are some heavy thoughts to be having alone in that moment for an hour.

00:10:30:21 – 00:10:31:08
Draidyn Wollmann: M-hm.

00:10:31:10 – 00:10:33:00
Draidyn Wollmann

00:10:33:02 – 00:10:36:24
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Do you remember being found?

00:10:36:26 – 00:10:51:23
Draidyn Wollmann: Yes, I do. My boss, Warren– I heard a truck door closing. I thought, I didn’t know until he came up to me. I yelled for help. He ran over to me, called 911.

00:10:51:25 – 00:11:06:02
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah. Do you mind, Draidyn, just going back a little bit? When you’re– you heard the truck, and it was the first person to find you, when your boss found you– Do you remember, like, did you hear him walking up? Did you hear him say anything? Was he like–

00:11:06:04 – 00:11:19:23
Draidyn Wollmann: He was terrified and shocked? Like, hmm, how would I explain? His expression was very scared, I guess. Very scared.

00:11:19:26 – 00:11:21:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Do you remember what he said to you?

00:11:21:29 – 00:11:23:02
Draidyn Wollmann: Not really, no.

00:11:23:03 – 00:11:23:19
Co-host Deborah Tetley: That’s okay.

00:11:23:19 – 00:11:27:21
Draidyn Wollmann: I only remember him calling the ambulance people and that.

00:11:27:22 – 00:11:30:23
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So you could hear him on the phone with 911?

00:11:30:26 – 00:11:34:06
Draidyn Wollmann: Yes.

00:11:34:08 – 00:11:38:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And now, a quick word from our Season 2 sponsor.

00:11:38:18 – 00:12:14:29
ARC Resources ad spot: As Canada’s third largest natural gas producer and the largest producer of condensate, ARC Resources is proud to play an important role in the responsible development of Canada’s energy resources in delivering those resources. Safety is the number one priority, always, and it’s that core value that makes ARC’s partnership with STARS a natural fit. It’s our shared goal to ensure that everyone arrives home safely at the end of the day. Learn more about how ARC is leading the way for safe and responsible energy development at arcresources.com.

00:12:15:02 – 00:12:19:12
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Welcome back. A lot of people came to your aid that day.

00:12:19:15 – 00:12:21:00
Draidyn Wollmann: Yes. Yeah.

00:12:21:02 – 00:12:34:19
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And respecting that you were in a pretty tough spot, but you say that you remember a bunch of it, what do you remember about the people that were helping you that day? Who was sort of milling around? And what comes to mind when you think about that moment when people were helping?

00:12:34:22 – 00:12:53:03
Draidyn Wollmann: Well, I remember seeing some ambulance people, random people. I saw the mechanic guy, he works at the Laird Manufacturing. He was disassembling the mower deck.

00:12:53:10 – 00:12:59:06
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Do you remember when they actually took the lawn mower apart? Do you remember that happening?

00:12:59:08 – 00:13:16:24
Draidyn Wollmann: I remember them– they were disassembling it from the mower itself, disassembling all the arms that go to it and that. I was put out before I could see them lift the the mower deck off of me.

00:13:16:27 – 00:13:17:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Okay.

00:13:17:29 – 00:14:29:06
Draidyn Wollmann: Then, they put me, like, into this weird sleep thing. I was still conscious. I was able to hear everything, just not be able to move my body or any of my muscles. Then I heard and felt that I was being carried to the helicopter. I heard the engines roaring, but I didn’t actually… was able to look around. Then I remember being– feeling flying and then being– landing, I believe, on the helipad. Then everything going quiet, being rushed down the elevator to the emergency room. Then they put me into a coma, which was so terrifying. It was weird. I felt like I was awake. I was looking at people, barely, through a mask. When you’re in a coma, days go by, like, literally, by minutes. When I asked how long I was out, they said I was put out for a week. I’m like, it only felt like it was out for five minutes.

00:14:29:08 – 00:14:29:29
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Wow.

00:14:30:01 – 00:14:31:16
Draidyn Wollmann: Yeah.

00:14:31:18 – 00:14:35:16
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah. And I imagine that time went slowly for the people who love you.

00:14:35:16 – 00:14:36:04
Draidyn Wollmann: M-hm.

00:14:36:07 – 00:14:38:00
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Probably went very slowly for your mom.

00:14:38:00 – 00:14:40:00
Draidyn Wollmann: Yeah.

00:14:40:02 – 00:14:53:07
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Draidyn, how much do you know about what the STARS crew members did for you? I know– of course, you knew that you were flown in a helicopter, but beyond that, like, what kind of– how much do you know about what sort of care they provided to you?

00:14:53:09 – 00:15:16:08
Draidyn Wollmann: To be honest, I do not know. I was not awake, conscious. Well, I was conscious, but I was not able to hear the crew talking or them touching. I couldn’t feel them touching me. All I know was I could hear the engine roaring. That’s all I could hear.

00:15:16:10 – 00:15:38:27
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: They infused you with blood while you were still trapped by the lawnmower. And it was the blood that, they infused at that point. That, was integral in saving your life. And there was one (unit) while you were still with the lawnmower, one in the helicopter, and then more back at the hospital. What are your thoughts about STARS and the people, who were from STARS who helped to care for you that day?

00:15:38:29 – 00:15:50:07
Draidyn Wollmann: I want to say they did a good job. They’re good crew members, very well trained, I will say they’re… ten out of ten. Very good people. Very good job.

00:15:50:09 – 00:16:05:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Ten out of ten. I’ll make sure they hear that. That’s great. Let’s pick it up at the moment you wake up and you realize where you are and you start hearing, you know, more detail about what happened. What’s going through your mind at that time? What kind of questions are you asking those who are around you?

00:16:05:28 – 00:16:16:09
Draidyn Wollmann: I was asking if my arm could have been saved at all. They said it could, but it wouldn’t function at all.

00:16:16:11 – 00:16:19:15
Co-host Deborah Tetley: That was the first that you learned that you lost your arm.

00:16:19:18 – 00:16:21:02
Draidyn Wollmann: M-hm.

00:16:21:02 – 00:16:26:22
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Do you mind talking about that a little bit? So, that was a complete shock to you. You didn’t know that was coming.

00:16:26:24 – 00:16:45:10
Draidyn Wollmann: Yeah, I guess I was very disappointed by sort of what— I think I guessed that I knew I lost it but hoping they could have fixed it, but from there I just accepted it that it was gone.

00:16:45:13 – 00:16:58:27
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: You sort of started a new journey in your life that day, and you talked about it a minute ago when you said you felt like you learned some things through the process. How has Draidyn become a different person in the past year?

00:16:59:00 – 00:17:03:14
Draidyn Wollmann: Mainly more responsible, I sort of want to say.

00:17:03:16 – 00:17:05:26
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Do you have an example of that?

00:17:05:28 – 00:17:27:21
Draidyn Wollmann: One time my mom, when I had my prosthetic, asked me to vacuum when she was going out with a friend. I said sure. I did vacuum, I vacuumed everywhere, I did the stairs and the kitchen. My old me, would’ve just vacuumed in the living room, do the stairs and not the kitchen.

00:17:27:23 – 00:17:32:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Do a lot of people ask you questions about your arm, how it works, how it functions?

00:17:32:29 – 00:17:36:16
Draidyn Wollmann: A couple people in my class do, yes.

00:17:36:18 – 00:17:38:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: What do you say to them?

00:17:38:15 – 00:17:54:24
Draidyn Wollmann: I show them how it works and that, how I use my hook and my arm. All that stuff. They— My school doesn’t really ask me about the accident. They never do— rarely do.

00:17:54:27 – 00:17:57:15
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Does it feel like you’re talking about someone else?

00:17:57:18 – 00:18:02:08
Draidyn Wollmann: I guess the older me, I can say, sort of, yeah.

00:18:02:12 – 00:18:04:07
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Like a different Draidyn.

00:18:04:10 – 00:18:14:26
Draidyn Wollmann: Yeah. My old Draidyn. Now I’m one-armed Draidyn. And my friend usually calls me 15 per cent Terminator.

00:18:15:01 – 00:18:15:22
All: (laughter)

00:18:15:24 – 00:18:17:23
Co-host Deborah Tetley: That’s amazing. What do you think of that?

00:18:17:25 – 00:18:19:21
Draidyn Wollmann: I like that name a lot.

00:18:19:24 – 00:18:20:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, I like that too.

00:18:20:26 – 00:18:26:18
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You know, it’s interesting you talked about the old Draidyn. What are— Other than your arm, what else is different?

00:18:26:21 – 00:18:56:24
Draidyn Wollmann: Umm… not much— Well, my attitude of perceiving the world has changed. I guess, more mature, I guess. Understanding not everything is a game, that there’s more to life than just sitting around or being dumb, I guess. It’s sort of taught me a lesson, I sort of want to say that, like, I’m more cautious, I guess.

00:18:56:26 – 00:18:57:09
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah, that’s…

00:18:57:11 – 00:18:57:28
Co-host Deborah Tetley: That’s fair.

00:18:58:05 – 00:18:58:29
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: It’s a good takeaway.

00:18:59:05 – 00:19:01:08
Draidyn Wollmann

00:19:01:10 – 00:19:05:16
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: So, Draidyn, was this your first summer job or have you had summer jobs in the past?

00:19:05:19 – 00:19:08:14
Draidyn Wollmann: No, this was my very first one.

00:19:08:17 – 00:19:13:13
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And when you went into that job two weeks before, were you like, “Oh this is the best summer job”? Like, what— ?

00:19:13:15 – 00:19:21:25
Draidyn Wollmann: Well, I thought what I was going to get, I’ll be able to make money and then I’ll be able to buy my first car, hopefully.

00:19:21:28 – 00:19:24:07
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: What kind of car did you want to buy?

00:19:24:10 – 00:19:29:20
Draidyn Wollmann: Well, my mom says it has me a fuel-efficient one. I’d been looking around—

00:19:29:21 – 00:19:30:29
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Moms, hey?

00:19:31:01 – 00:19:42:28
Draidyn Wollmann: Yes, I’d been looking around, couldn’t find any, but my eyes always capture an old fox-body, or an old 90s wagon.

00:19:43:00 – 00:19:44:22
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Oh, yes. That’d be pretty cool.

00:19:44:24 – 00:19:48:21
Draidyn Wollmann: Yes. Station wagons are better than SUVs, in my opinion.

00:19:48:22 – 00:19:52:22
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You can put a lot of friends in a station wagon, eh?

00:19:52:24 – 00:20:04:07
Draidyn Wollmann: Yeah. I just like old vehicles because they look good and they sound good. Unlike the cars today that sound weird and are more bubble-like.

00:20:04:10 – 00:20:12:19
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Next time on Mission Ready.

00:20:12:22 – 00:20:26:12
Draidyn Wollmann: She’s a 1958 Pontiac with a 283 V8 in her. Manual, three on a tree. Very nice car.

00:20:26:14 – 00:20:30:07
Chris Dennis: This kid’s a fighter. Like, this kid’s going to go places in life.

00:20:30:09 – 00:20:40:25
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: Draidyn coming back to visit is just so important for us, because it helps us as air medical crew to see why what we do matters.

00:20:40:28 – 00:20:46:03
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources, is produced in-house by me, Deborah Tetley.

00:20:46:03 – 00:20:51:26
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And me, Lyle Aspinall. Watch video clips from this season at stars.ca/missionready.

00:20:51:29 – 00:21:08:18
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready contains original theme music by Kaiya Gamble, whose dad was a long time STARS pilot and whose mom was once a transport physician. Check her out at kaiyagamble.com. Please rate and review Mission Ready wherever you found it, and be sure to tell you friends about it. Also, check out Season 1.

00:21:08:20 – 00:21:15:02
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Want to be a STARS ally? Get involved and support our mission by visiting stars.ca. Until next time, thanks for listening.

00:00:01:28 – 00:00:33:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Before we start, a word of caution. As you know, STARS provides pre-hospital care for critically ill and injured patients who have sustained severe trauma or debilitating illnesses. It’s what we do. As such, some of the details in this podcast may be difficult for some listeners. The STARS mission being explored this season involves graphic descriptions of physical injuries to a youth. Psychological impacts are also detailed. The patients, family, and supporters have generously allowed us to tell this story as a personalized insight into STARS.

00:00:33:29 – 00:01:10:16
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And for that, we are genuinely grateful. The community, and everyone else who was involved, welcomed us with open arms to help us tell this story. Having spent time with about 20 people researching it and recording interviews on the phone, virtually, in studio, and right at the scene of the incident, we can tell you this: our conversations were raw and candid, and as such, some of the details uncomfortable. For this podcast, we’ve endeavoured to tell the story accurately without being too sensational. Still, listener discretion is advised.

00:01:10:19 – 00:01:18:07
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: And so the fire department then went to dismantle this entire lawnmower, and they had it dismantled in two minutes.

00:01:18:10 – 00:01:28:14
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: I honestly wasn’t sure at that time if he was going to make it when the lawnmower came off of him. He was just fighting for his life at that time, and it was something I was really unsure of.

00:01:28:16 – 00:01:37:15
Chris Dennis: I didn’t think when we put him on the helicopter he’d be coming off alive. I was very amazed he was still alive, actually,

00:01:37:17 – 00:01:47:15
Kevin Burrell: Just by looking at someone, you can you can kind of tell if they’re going to make it or not. From looking at him, I didn’t think he was going to make it.

00:01:47:17 – 00:02:02:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Welcome to Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources. This STARS podcast breaks down in detail one mission each season to give you a stronger understanding of how we provide critical care anywhere, and what happens before and after the mission. I’m Deborah Tetley.

00:02:02:23 – 00:02:18:05
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And I’m Lyle Aspinall. In Season 2, we analyzing an emergency response to a traumatic incident where a teenager was run over by an industrial-sized riding lawnmower in Laird, Saskatchewan. This is Episode 4: Transfer of Care.

00:02:18:07 – 00:02:44:00
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: By now, you’ve gained a solid understanding of the massive team working together to give Draidyn Wollmann a fighting chance after being run over by an industrial lawnmower. At the scene, several things are happening at once. With the mower still on top of Draidyn and firefighters trying to figure out how to best get it off of him, STARS flight nurse Bailey Sinclair begins infusing blood through the large bore IV line the ground paramedics have already put in place, and STARS flight paramedic Glen Pilon preps for an intubation.

00:02:44:02 – 00:03:23:23
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Yeah, he is on ground level. He’s on his back, he’s looking up to the sky, and he has his right arm sticking out from underneath the lawnmower, right beside the wheel. And just from his neck up is all that we can see, really. And so we set up right at the head and we get all of our equipment out. We get all of our intubation equipment out, we get our bag valve mask, we get our oxygen out, we go back to the helicopter and we get the blood box. The pilot, the safety pilot, is there to bring that to us. Open up the blood and start infusing the blood as we’re setting up for other things.

00:03:23:25 – 00:03:52:29
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: He was kind of in and out of consciousness, just gasping for air. He had an IV in the one arm that was out from the lawnmower. So immediately I started giving him blood while he was still under the lawnmower, while Glen set up to capture his airway. While I was doing that, Glen was getting ready for this airway, and I was kind of thinking, What is going to happen once we lift this lawnmower off of him? So a lot of things cross my mind.

00:03:53:01 – 00:06:15:02
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: We make one attempt to try and intubate him as the blood is going into him. We get better hemodynamics and so we can go ahead and make our intubation attempt. And we use a video laryngoscope to do that. And the video laryngoscope has a cord on the very top of the handle. So if you can imagine kind of a hockey stick that’s cut off just above the blade; you have a blade that goes into the mouth and then a handle that comes up. And on top of that handle is a cord that goes to the video screen. And because it’s a very bright day outside, you have a glare on that video screen. So you can do your direct laryngoscope, you can go in and see the mouth, but because he’s laying on the ground, you have to also get down as low as you can to see into the mouth, because you want to put that tube into the trachea and not into the esophagus, because you want to assist his breathing. So when I go to put the blade in, the top of the laryngoscope handle, where the cord is, it hits the lawnmower and it is stuck there, and I’m not able to lift up in order to see the epiglottis that I need to see where the vocal cords are in order to pass the tube in. So we had to make the decision to try and do a type of a blind insertion using a bougie, which is kind of a plastic stick that will go into the vocal cords. And what you feel for is the tracheal rings along the front of your throat here, and that fine feeling of a little bump, bump, bump as you’re pushing this plastic rod down. And then you would put the endotracheal tube over top of that and into the patient’s airway so that you can assist the breathing. But I was not able to see the vocal cords or feel any tracheal rings. So we had to come back out and we had to manually just ventilate the patient using just an oropharyngeal airway, which is about this far, that just goes just behind the tongue. And we had to make the decision to take off the lawnmower base in order to get that airway in to him, to assist his breathing. All the while, there’s still a blade inside his chest.

00:06:15:04 – 00:06:54:29
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: The first responders had said that they believed the blade was in Draidyn’s chest, and they were worried that when they lifted it off that he might bleed out from that side. So I was thinking things about, okay, we might need to apply some pressure. We might need to give more blood. What might we need to do to stop this bleeding when we lift the lawnmower off? I was also worried that if the blade was near his chest or in his lungs that we might have to decompress his chest. So it’s kind of our version of doing a chest tube out on the scene, just to help that lung re-expand if it had collapsed while the lawnmower was on him. So I was thinking lots of other things while getting medications and blood ready for this intubation.

00:06:55:01 – 00:07:02:11
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: One volunteer firefighter on scene had firsthand knowledge on how to take the lawnmower apart. Laird fire chief Chris Dennis talked to us about it.

00:07:02:13 – 00:07:43:07
Chris Dennis: These lawnmowers are not just like normal lawnmowers. They’re big industrial lawnmowers, and they’re built and maintained and and all that right in our town. And one of the lucky things we had that day was, the head mechanic in that lawnmower shop is on our fire department. He was one of the first firefighters on the scene, and he was there instructing us and helping us to take it apart because it was like, if you’re going to do this type of stuff, you’re going to cause more problems and more injury. He was an integral tool to us getting the lawnmower off of him in such quick time without causing more damage to him.

00:07:43:10 – 00:07:50:23
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: And so the fire department then went to dismantle this entire lawnmower, and they had it dismantled in two minutes.

00:07:50:25 – 00:08:13:05
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: I honestly wasn’t sure at that time if he was going to make it when the lawnmower came off of him. He was just fighting for his life at that time, and it was something I was really unsure of. So once Glen was all ready for the intubation or to capture his airway, and I had all the blood and medications ready, we got the first responder crew to lift the lawnmower off of Draidyn.

00:08:13:08 – 00:08:29:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: It was everyone’s first view of the damage the mower had done. One of Draidyn’s feet was injured from being dragged under a wheel, but worse, there was a large hole in his chest and his left arm was mostly severed. First responder Kayla Burrell was holding the bag of blood that was going into Draidyn’s other arm.

00:08:29:28 – 00:09:03:04
Kayla Burrell: At that point, they had given him medication that put him under, I guess. So, like, he was, he wasn’t speaking anymore. But we got him out and could see the extent of the injuries. And um… I’d never seen anything like it. And I honestly don’t want to see anything like it ever again. And I did, I was holding the blood bag and one of my fellow firefighters asked, Do you want me to take over? Can I hold it? And I was like, no, I’m good. Like, this is– I wanted to do more, like, this is all I can do right now is hold this blood.

00:09:03:07 – 00:09:18:06
Chris Dennis: When you lift the lawnmower deck off of him and you see a hole in his chest the size of a football… I didn’t think when we put him on the helicopter he’d be coming off alive. I was very amazed he was still alive, actually.

00:09:18:08 – 00:09:34:26
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: When they lifted the lawnmower off of him, we could see that his left arm was severely, severely injured. It was gaping open, hardly attached. And then he also had a large injury to kind of to his abdomen.

00:09:34:29 – 00:09:51:14
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: And he had this high visibility vest that was on him. It was all twisted around and in a ball on his chest and completely covered in blood. And we were successful in Intubating him at that time.

00:09:51:17 – 00:10:01:15
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: So Glen got the airway. Everything went really well, and we actually were able to get Draidyn out from under the lawnmower onto a stretcher.

00:10:01:17 – 00:10:17:23
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: And we were able to get the second unit of blood started into him as we moved him towards the helicopter.

00:10:17:25 – 00:10:27:12
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Their off-duty manager, Daniel Kobylak, who was standing nearby, got on the phone to update STARS transport physician, Dr. Segun Oyedokun, who you heard from in the previous two episodes.

00:10:27:14 – 00:10:46:01
Daniel Kobylak: It was a very busy scene, as you can imagine, and Bailey and Glen were doing an amazing job taking care of Draidyn. And I just looked at everything that was going on and I thought, you know, now’s a good time for me to step back and update our transport physician and make sure that the receiving centre knows as well too what’s about to come in.

00:10:46:03 – 00:10:47:18
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Sharlene: …Sharlene speaking.

00:10:47:21 – 00:10:50:28
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Daniel Kobylak: Sharlene, Daniel here, just backing up STAR 11. I need Dr. O, please.

00:10:51:04 – 00:10:52:08
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Sharlene: You got it. One moment.

00:10:52:10 – 00:10:55:17
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Daniel Kobylak: Thanks.

00:10:55:19 – 00:10:56:00
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Hello.

00:10:56:04 – 00:10:58:25
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Sharlene: Hey, Dr. Oyedokun, AMC on the line, one moment.

00:10:58:27 – 00:11:12:08
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Daniel Kobylak: So, Dr. O, we just got the mower deck off of him. I’m just here helping Glen and Bailey. He is quite, quite down. We still do have a faint pulse, significant trauma to the chest. And the whole thoracic cavity is open from the mower blade.

00:11:12:11 – 00:11:17:27
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Has it gone through the thoracic cavity? Did it perforate the lungs? Do you know?

00:11:18:00 – 00:11:25:10
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Daniel Kobylak: Hard to tell. There’s quite a bit of trauma there right now. We’re just working on getting the (inaudible) airway in place. And we’ll be transporting here soon. I just wanted to give you an update. Thanks.

00:11:25:10 – 00:11:26:22
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Absolutely.

00:11:26:23 – 00:11:27:17
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Daniel Kobylak: Thanks. Bye.

00:11:27:19 – 00:11:28:07
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Okay. Bye.

00:11:28:14 – 00:11:30:04
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Sharlene: Thanks, Dr. Oyedokun.

00:11:30:07 – 00:11:36:16
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Sharlene, do you want to put me through to the peds emerg doc, please?

00:11:36:17 – 00:11:37:02
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Sharlene: You got it.

00:11:37:02 – 00:11:38:17
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: So I can give them this update, yeah,

00:11:38:18 – 00:11:43:07
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Yeah, give me one moment.

00:11:43:10 – 00:11:50:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Sharlene Ernst in the STARS Emergency Link Centre patched him through to the on-duty pediatric emergency physician at the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital.

00:11:50:27 – 00:12:17:27
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: So, just a quick update: They were just able to get the lawnmower off of him, and he has a huge right chest wound. So, the blood pressure, very low. They didn’t quite give me a number. They’ve given blood. They’ve given TXA. They’re trying to secure the airway, and they’re trying to package him up as soon as possible. So as soon as I get more details, I will let you know. So right now, they’re trying to secure the airway. They’re trying to, resuscitate…

00:12:18:00 – 00:12:20:25
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – JIM PATTISON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL doc: Okay, so they’re tubing him, basically.

00:12:20:27 – 00:12:22:18
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Yes.

00:12:22:20 – 00:12:26:07
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – JIM PATTISON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL doc: All right. Any other injuries other than the chest that we know of?

00:12:26:10 – 00:12:28:17
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: There’s a lower extremity injury…

00:12:28:19 – 00:12:53:22
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Back in Laird, the STARS helicopter was parked roughly 100 metres from the scene, across a gravel road and near a gazebo in a large public park. As pilots Alex Parra and Yves Bolduc started it up, Draidyn was strapped onto the stretcher and several helpers began carrying him to the open rear doors. First responder Kevin Burrell was among them. He had been in Saskatoon when the call originally came in and had seen the STARS helicopter leave the city when he began driving to Laird.

00:12:53:24 – 00:13:32:15
Kevin Burrell: So I didn’t have any gear on. I was just in my normal street clothes. So, just by seeing what I saw, I could recognize that they were getting close to loading him up and taking him away. So I went to one of our firefighters that was in full PPE and wasn’t a first responder yet, I said, You go over, work the landing zone, I’ll take over here for you. So I took over what he was doing. We got him on to the spine board. They already had an IV going in him. We loaded him up onto the stretcher, strapped him on. We had to put his arms up, on an– that was kind of scary.

00:13:32:18 – 00:13:42:18
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: However, Draidyn was finally on the stretcher and free of the lawnmower. And it was then that the first glimmers of hope began to emerge. Here’s flight paramedic Glen Pilon.

00:13:42:21 – 00:14:08:18
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: I think my outlook on Draidyn’s future changed when we moved him from the ground to the helicopter stretcher, and we had our cardiac monitor on there. We had a blood pressure on his leg. We had a pulse oximetry on his finger. We had cardiac monitoring on him. And when I saw all those numbers, and I love those numbers, that’s when my outlook changed for him.

00:14:08:18 – 00:14:12:15
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Love your big smile there. The audience can’t see this, but you’re smiling.

00:14:12:15 – 00:15:21:14
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: That was the turning point for me because when he was underneath the lawnmower and– Imagine this, that you’re infusing blood into his right arm and you have an intravenous in his elbow. You need to put a blood pressure cuff on that right bicep. And that has to squeeze. And that’s going to stop the blood flow that we’re trying to infuse into him. So we have no blood pressure other than just palpating his carotid artery. And we know that by doing that, his blood pressure could be as low as 50 systolic. So we didn’t want to put a blood pressure cuff on his right arm and have the possibility of stopping the blood, and also losing that intravenous that’s in his right elbow. So we decided not to put the blood pressure cuff on him while he was underneath the lawnmower with the lawnmower on him. Once we had the lawnmower off, we could cut off his jeans, get him on a stretcher, and we can put the blood pressure cuff on his leg, which gave us a number. And that was our turning point for me.

00:15:21:17 – 00:15:28:14
Co-host Deborah Tetley: It was a turning point for Bailey as well. For the first time since their care began, hope emerged for her too.

00:15:28:16 – 00:15:44:06
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: In flight, on our way back, we were able to get some vital signs. We were able to alert the hospital that we were on our way, that they would need some blood ready and that they needed the trauma team there and ready for Draidyn to meet us there because this kid was very, very sick.

00:15:44:08 – 00:15:46:22
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: … STAR 11, Are you able to hook me up with our TP, please?

00:15:46:25 – 00:15:50:15
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Shae: Yeah. One sec, Bailey.

00:15:50:17 – 00:15:51:05
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Hello.

00:15:51:08 – 00:15:54:19
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Shae: Hi, Dr. Oyedokun. Just have Bailey with STAR 11 looking to connect with you.

00:15:54:22 – 00:15:55:04
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Okay,

00:15:55:08 – 00:15:57:08
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Shae: Bailey, you have Dr. Oyedokun, go ahead.

00:15:57:10 – 00:16:09:08
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: Hey, Dr. Oyedokun, it’s Bailey. We have just got him loaded. We are going to be back in Saskatoon in hopefully about 15 minutes. We’re running our second unit of blood. We’ve pressure-infused one gram of TXA. Do you want another gram?

00:16:09:12 – 00:16:13:17
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Yeah, just give a second one. Give a second one. That’s okay.

00:16:13:19 – 00:16:20:14
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: Okay. Sounds good. We are just going to load, so I’m probably going to lose you here. But we will be in Saskatoon shortly.

00:16:20:17 – 00:16:21:10
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: Okay.

00:16:21:12 – 00:16:22:07
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: Okay. Thanks, Dr. Oyedokun.

00:16:22:13 – 00:16:24:00
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Segun: All right.

00:16:24:02 – 00:16:25:16
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE: STAR 11, Link Centre go ahead.

00:16:25:18 – 00:16:28:17
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Alex Parra: …1553 the scene, thanks…

00:16:28:19 – 00:16:36:13
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE: And STAR 11, Link Centre. Transmission broke off. I did copy. You were up at 1553. Your landing zone has been requested secure at Jim Pattison.

00:16:36:16 – 00:16:42:11
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Alex Parra: And just be aware, we’re gonna need at least two units of blood to get ready for us. We’re using our blood.

00:16:42:14 – 00:16:54:02
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Alex Parra: STAR 11 copy. 1556. And copy remarks in regards to the blood.

00:16:54:04 – 00:16:59:00
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And now, a quick word from our Season 2 sponsor.

00:16:59:03 – 00:17:34:29
ARC Resources ad spot: As Canada’s third largest natural gas producer and the largest producer of condensate, ARC Resources is proud to play an important role in the responsible development of Canada’s energy resources in delivering those resources. Safety is the number one priority, always, and it’s that core value that makes ARC’s partnership with STARS a natural fit. It’s our shared goal to ensure that everyone arrives home safely at the end of the day. Learn more about how ARC is leading the way for safe and responsible energy development at arcresources.com.

00:17:35:01 – 00:17:49:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Welcome back. Draidyn wasn’t the only non-STARS passenger on board the helicopter for that flight. I asked Yves Bolduc, the pilot who flew this mission, about the extra ridealong.

00:17:49:23 – 00:18:05:13
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So, we understand that something rare happened on this mission, and that is we took Draidyn’s mom in the helicopter. Can we talk about that a little bit? How rare it is, how we make those decisions? What protocols, what do you guys discuss when taking along a mom or dad?

00:18:05:15 – 00:18:47:14
Yves Bolduc: The consideration was, at the time, because his injury was so severe at the time, they didn’t know if he was going to make it or not, right? Therefore, at least, you know, you have that mom with us there. But not only that, the mom, you know, has a background in health care as well. So we knew that we had someone that understood what our medical crew was doing. It was a mom that understood, you know, that you need to be calm for the sake of your kid and for the sake of our crew. They need to be focused on, you know, keeping him, you know, as stabilized as possible until they got to the emergency room. Okay. So that that was the reason why there was no question about it, you know, for that instance.

00:18:47:16 – 00:18:52:11
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Alex Parra was the safety pilot on this mission. So it was his job to prepare Draidyn’s mom.

00:18:52:14 – 00:19:00:20
Alex Parra: And I do remember just telling her just, you know, whatever happens in that helicopter, just let them do the job. He’s in a good hands. Don’t panic.

00:19:00:22 – 00:19:03:29
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair said Christine was a model passenger.

00:19:04:02 – 00:19:32:10
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: That was a bit of a different experience having her along, but it didn’t change what we did. I remember thinking, what must this feel like for her? She was so calm and collected and cooperative, and I could not believe how well she was handling it, when her 16-year-old son, when she had just seen him under a lawnmower like that. I remember just thinking. I can’t imagine how she’s feeling.

00:19:32:12 – 00:19:40:00
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Glen said although it’s rare for a parent to join a flight like this, he prefers to do it whenever possible. It’s always assessed on a case-by-case basis.

00:19:40:02 – 00:21:18:10
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Yeah, absolutely. There’s one of the things that we can talk about on the way out to the call. If there’s a parent there, especially for somebody under the age of 16, that’s a pediatric patient and is going to be going to the pediatric intensive care unit, we want to bring a parent along with us. And so we told our safety pilot that we want to bring mom with us. And then mom gets the safety briefing, where she’s going to sit on the helicopter and how to put the seatbelt on and how to take the seatbelt off in case of an emergency and stuff like that. So the safety pilot is doing those things while the other pilot is in the helicopter with the helicopter running. And so, yeah, it’s a busy little environment. And, sometimes you wonder, you know, are you going to have two patients on that helicopter on that flight back to the hospital? Because not only do you have the critical injured pediatric patient, but you’ve also got a distraught mother that’s with you too that can take up a lot of your time when you need to focus your time to the pediatric patient. Those are things that you deal with on scene. You kind of assess what the mother is doing at the time when you’re trying to work on their child, and if you see that the parent is quite frantic and is in a lot of shock– Bailey and I would have that discussion on the way to the helicopter to say, maybe we shouldn’t bring mom along. Maybe mom should go in a family vehicle to the hospital because we’re not going to have time to deal with that. But she was incredible. She was so calm and collected. We knew that we weren’t going to have a problem or deal with the mother on the way to the hospital, as well as dealing with a critical, injured pediatric patient.

00:21:18:12 – 00:21:30:01
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Remember in a previous episode when Christine said she, quote, corrected her behaviour when she found herself acting on her emotions upon arriving at the scene? Well, she said she used that same discipline inside the helicopter.

00:21:30:03 – 00:22:27:10
Christine Wollmann: They sat me into the helicopter and I saw them bringing Draidyn, and then they loaded Draidyn up and we took off. And I just would– first of all, I didn’t really look at Draidyn because I didn’t know exactly what I was dealing with. So I would just look out on our town as we were leaving. And then I looked at the monitor and I saw that his vitals were good. So I’m like, okay, he’s going to make it. And then I did see, like, a bandage over his chest and that’s all I– And then, I thought, no, I’m just going to look at the monitor. And then I looked outside. And that’s all I just kept doing is, I just kept looking back and forth. And then I did see the paramedic on STARS, he had an ultrasound on his phone, which I thought was really cool. And then, so I kind of saw that, but I didn’t see what he was looking at.

00:22:27:12 – 00:22:44:14
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: That was Glen operating the ultrasound. In fact, he was doing that in one hand while at the same time essentially breathing for Draidyn by regularly squeezing a manual resuscitation bag in his other hand, something he would normally leave to a machine. But it was such a short flight it made sense for him to just do it himself.

00:22:44:16 – 00:23:07:03
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: While bagging with my right hand, I was using my left hand to assess for a pneumothorax. And so I was using the ultrasound and looking at the ultrasound to see if there was lung-sliding on the ultrasound to see if he had a collapsed lung from that blade being in his chest. And he did not have a pneumothorax.

00:23:07:03 – 00:23:07:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: It just gave me chills.

00:23:07:28 – 00:23:08:28
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: So yeah,

00:23:09:00 – 00:23:26:11
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: I can’t imagine that. I mean, I’ve been in the helicopter while a mission is going on, and it’s loud and it’s moving and it’s shaking, and in one hand you are manually bagging, and in the other hand, you’ve got an ultrasound going on, and Bailey’s doing her thing. And at some point in the 17-minute flight, somebody’s got to talk to the hospital and tell them what’s incoming. What are you telling the hospital at that point?

00:23:26:14 – 00:23:43:18
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Yeah, it’s only a 17-minute flight, so you want to give them as much notice as you can so that they can prepare and have all their teams ready to go when the patient arrives. And so there are a lot of things that need to be done in the helicopter in that 17-minute flight. And it can get quite busy in there.

00:23:43:20 – 00:23:45:25
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE: STAR 11 Link Centre, go ahead.

00:23:45:28 – 00:23:49:00
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Can I get a patch to RUH, please?

00:23:49:00 – 00:23:52:21
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: STAR 11, roger, standby for patch.

00:23:52:24 – 00:23:53:28
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – JIM PATTISON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL: Peds emerg.

00:23:54:01 – 00:23:57:29
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE: We’re inbound with a 16-year-old from a scene call up in Laird. You guys are aware of the patient coming in?

00:23:58:00 – 00:23:58:24
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – JIM PATTISON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL: Yes. Yes.

00:23:58:26 – 00:24:02:28
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE: Perfect. Our crew is looking for the inbound patch. I will link you in now. Okay?

00:24:03:00 – 00:24:03:28
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – JIM PATTISON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL: Okay.

00:24:04:01 – 00:24:07:12
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE: STAR 11 medical, it’s the Link Centre. You’re online with RUH peds emerg. Go ahead, please…

00:24:07:12 – 00:24:19:24
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: … angulated, deformed left arm. And we have a heart rate of 176, a pressure of 74 on…

00:24:19:27 – 00:24:53:04
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: And there’s another unit of blood that needs to be infused in the helicopter on the way to the hospital. So Bailey is busy, and we also have to sedate the patient, too. If the blood is starting to profuse the patient, profuse the brain, and the patient starts to wake up, and then when the patient starts to wake up, they can reach up and they can grab the endotracheal tube and they’ll pull it out. So Bailey has to also sedate the patient and draw up medications to keep the patient sedated as well. So it’s a busy 17 minutes in that helicopter to the helipad.

00:24:53:06 – 00:25:05:09
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: But I remember just feeling a bit of relief when he had some pretty good vital signs and felt like we were going to be okay to make it to the hospital. We were going to get him to his next step of his care.

00:25:05:11 – 00:25:22:02
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Yeah, so we land on top of the helipad at the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital, and we go down to the trauma room. And there is an amazing, a massive team waiting for him. And we hand over care and we give our report, and they do their thing.

00:25:22:04 – 00:26:06:17
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: I used to work in the emergency department, both the adult and pediatric emergency. So taking Draidyn down the elevator and into the trauma room, I saw a lot of my colleagues. I saw the whole trauma team waiting for him. I saw the pediatric emergency team waiting for him. There were just so many people who were there to help Draidyn, and I remember just feeling such relief that all of these people and all of these capable, amazing health care providers were there to help Draidyn. And I think that was just a sense of relief for me, was, we got him there, we got him there safely, and we got him there alive. And now it was up to these people to take over and continue on with Draidyn’s care at that point.

00:26:06:19 – 00:26:12:06
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And obviously, because you’d work with them, you knew that he was in the best of hands, right? Like, that must have felt very confident for you.

00:26:12:07 – 00:26:13:26
Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: Yeah, absolutely.

00:26:13:28 – 00:26:24:13
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: They start getting bloodwork drawn. They do CT scans. They take him to the operating room. And just incredible, like, an incredible team to hand over care to. It’s just,

00:26:24:16 – 00:26:30:14
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: I know Christine was pretty amazed by what she saw on the receiving end in the hospital.

00:26:30:17 – 00:26:44:18
Flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Yeah, absolutely. For a mother, you know, like, to be in a parent’s perspective, like, to finally be in the hospital, and you know that you’re kind of out of a little bit of the woods. It’s a great feeling to have.

00:26:44:20 – 00:26:54:07
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Let’s hear it from Christine. Remember, she’s a trained first responder, and she was still in uniform from having rushed away from her day job at a nursing home when she first heard about Draidyn’s injury.

00:26:54:10 – 00:28:46:07
Christine Wollmann: And I followed him and they brought him into this room and there was like probably 20 people with yellow gowns just surrounding him. It was so cool to see. It reminded me of bees going to a hive. It was just so cool. I’m standing there just watching and observing, and then the social worker comes up to me and asks me, are you mom? And I says, yes, I’m mom. She goes, I can’t believe how calm you are right now. And I said, well, panicking doesn’t help. And said most of it has to do with my training. And then she goes, yeah, but you’re blending in with my staff. Because I had my scrubs on from work. And then they went and took me into a room where I sat with her for a little while, and three doctors came in. And they told me that his arm was cut in a million pieces and that they could try and salvage it, but they said that it wouldn’t be functional and it would be dead. And they said there’s risk of infection. And I just said, you do whatever you got to do to save his life. And they left, and then the other doctor — this is what I was waiting for — he told me that Draidyn’s muscle was just shaven off of his chest and that his ribs were actually cracked upwards, and that’s all that had happened. And I’m like, okay. And right then and there, I knew that God was there. And then afterwards he went– They had surgery. And then we were in ICU.

00:28:46:10 – 00:28:54:25
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Draidyn did have a massive wound to his chest, but surprisingly, the mower blade narrowly missed puncturing his lung or causing significant damage to any major organs.

00:28:54:28 – 00:29:41:14
Christine Wollmann: His wound was like, it was 20 cm by 20 cm. And when I was reading the doctors reports, it said that there was grass, dirt, rocks and all that all around it, and they could see his right lung and his diaphragm and but there was, like, nothing inside. And I thought that was amazing. So at first they were really concentrating on his arm and his chest. And then after we found out that he had two fractures in his hips, and then he had a huge blood blister on the bottom of his heel from being dragged.

00:29:41:17 – 00:29:55:01
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: But what about his arm? After all, his left arm was under the mower deck, and we heard earlier from Bailey that it was significantly damaged. Well, the moment Draidyn came out of his induced coma, he had one very specific question for his mom.

00:29:55:04 – 00:30:38:17
Christine Wollmann: When he was in the induced coma, I’d get my family members to talk to him just so that he could hear their voices. And I was on the phone with my cousin Sheldon. Sheldon said, “Hi, buddy” to him, and he opened his eyes. And it freaked me out, and I’m like — gasp! And I go to the doctor, “He’s awake!” I said, “Sheldon, I got to call you back. He just woke up.” So they ended up taking the breathing tube out shortly after that. And when they did, the first thing that Draidyn asks is, is my arm gone? And they said, unfortunately, yes, but it saved your life.

00:30:38:19 – 00:30:40:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Next time on Mission Ready.

00:30:40:28 – 00:30:45:29
Co-host Deborah Tetley: You said something earlier that you were talking to yourself in your head. What were you saying?

00:30:46:01 – 00:30:55:08
Draidyn Wollmann: Well, I’m not going to — bleep — die. I’m not going to — bleep — die. I’m going to figure out how to get out of this.

00:30:55:10 – 00:30:57:00
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Draidyn. In his own words.

00:30:57:02 – 00:31:02:06
Draidyn Wollmann: That’s why I was repeating to myself in my head.

00:31:02:09 – 00:31:07:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources, is produced in-house by me, Deborah Tetley.

00:31:07:19 – 00:31:13:11
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And me, Lyle Aspinall. Watch video clips from this season at stars.ca/missionready.

00:31:13:13 – 00:31:30:02
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready contains original theme music by Kaiya Gamble, whose dad was a long time STARS pilot and whose mom was once a transport physician. Check her out at kaiyagamble.com. Please rate and review Mission Ready wherever you found it, and be sure to tell your friends about it. Also, check out Season 1.

00:31:30:04 – 00:31:36:16
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Want to be a STARS ally? Get involved and support our mission by visiting stars.ca. Until next time, thanks for listening.

00:00:01:28 – 00:00:33:19
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Before we start, a word of caution. As you know, STARS provides pre-hospital care for critically ill and injured patients who have sustained severe trauma or debilitating illnesses. It’s what we do. As such, some of the details in this podcast may be difficult for some listeners. The STARS mission being explored this season involves graphic descriptions of physical injuries to a youth. Psychological impacts are also detailed. The patients, family, and supporters have generously allowed us to tell this story as a personalized insight into STARS.

00:00:33:21 – 00:01:07:05
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And for that, we are genuinely grateful. The community, and everyone else who was involved, welcomed us with open arms to help us tell this story. Having spent time with about 20 people researching it and recording interviews on the phone, virtually, in studio, and right at the scene of the incident, we can tell you this: our conversations were raw and candid, and as such, some of the details uncomfortable. For this podcast, we’ve endeavoured to tell the story accurately without being too sensational. Still, listener discretion is advised.

00:01:07:07 – 00:01:43:11
Alex: This scene was very traumatic because I had never seen anybody eaten by a lawnmower that way. You can see, like, the whole blades were on top of the kid, and the only visible part of his body was the head and one shoulder. I don’t remember if it was left or right, but… And based on the people he was around, they said that basically his body stopped the machine. So you can imagine the severity of the injuries that a body can, you know, get from those blades turning to make the whole thing stop.

00:01:43:13 – 00:01:58:16
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Welcome to Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources. This STARS podcast breaks down in detail one mission each season to give you a stronger understanding of how we provide critical care anywhere, and what happens before and after the mission. I’m Deborah Tetley.

00:01:58:18 – 00:02:15:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And I’m Lyle Aspinall. In Season 2, we’re analyzing an emergency response to a traumatic incident where a teenager was run over by an industrial-sized riding lawnmower in Laird, Saskatchewan. This is Episode 3: STARS on Scene.

00:02:15:28 – 00:02:29:08
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Last week, you met several of the very first people who responded to 16-year-old Draidyn Wollmann becoming trapped under the cutting deck of an industrial riding lawnmower. First responder Kevin Burrell was one of them and wasn’t sure Draidyn would make it.

00:02:29:11 – 00:02:38:01
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And so when you hear on a call that you’re attending that STARS is on its way, or it might be required, what goes through your mind?

00:02:38:03 – 00:02:45:11
Kevin Burrell: First thing that goes through my mind is, oh, boy, this must be serious. They wouldn’t come out if it’s not.

00:02:45:13 – 00:02:56:07
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: The STARS crew, responding from Saskatoon, 60 km away, included flight paramedic Glen Pilon, a 30-year veteran of his trade, and flight nurse Bailey Sinclair.

00:02:56:09 – 00:03:00:02
Bailey: I think Draidyn’s call will always stand out for me.

00:03:00:04 – 00:03:04:09
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: This was Bailey’s first solo shift with STARS after many weeks of intense training.

00:03:04:16 – 00:03:34:11
Bailey: I’ve never been in an experience like that where somebody is still actively trapped under a lawnmower. Also, I think it’s always just different and hits a little harder when it’s a kid. It’s just more emotional, I think. Like, he’s such a young person. He’s got his whole life ahead of him. You just want what’s best for him. And I think you just always think and feel for that person and his family and what they’re going to be going through in the upcoming weeks, months, years.

00:03:34:13 – 00:03:55:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Bailey wasn’t the only new STARS team member to be involved in this call. Almost 700 km away in Calgary, Shae Evans was relatively new in her role as an emergency communications specialist on the critical patient side of the STARS Emergency Link Centre. She had already fielded hundreds of industry service calls for STARS vigilant on the other side of the room. But the logistically challenging world of critical patient coordination was a fresh start.

00:03:55:17 – 00:04:29:04
Shae Evans: Yeah, so I (was doing) what we call is logistics. So, whoever is on logistics is in charge of the helicopters. So, we’re the ones on the radios pre-alerting, dispatching. We’re the ones that have charge of getting the landing zone done. So, whether that be fire, RCMP, or if it’s really rural and we can’t get fire and RCMP, maybe the EMS truck has to do a landing zone. So, you got to make sure that there’s somewhere for your your team to land safely. You’re giving all the information to the medical crew. You’re basically the only, like, you’re the person answering the radio. So, any questions that need to be passed on, you’re doing that. It’s all about safety for the crew.

00:04:29:06 – 00:04:41:13
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Several members from the STARS Emergency Link Centre were involved in this call, including Lindsay Coates, who was handling the initial intake. Shae still remembers reading Lindsay’s notes as the STARS medical team in Saskatoon was brought into the call.

00:04:41:16 – 00:04:56:21
Shae Evans: What the note said was, he was wrapped up in the lawnmower with blades sticking — multiple blades — through his chest. So instantly you’re like, oh my, yeah. Like, that’s serious. And you know, you call the crew and they instantly, like, you barely get a few words out, they’re like, yeah, let’s go. And it was a beautiful summer day.

00:04:56:21 – 00:05:13:22
Co-host Deborah Tetley: They, like, checked the weather and they, I think, accepted dispatch in, like, two minutes. It was crazy. And yeah, instantly– I don’t think Lindsay got more than a couple words in before they’re like, yeah, let’s go. I don’t need to hear anything more. Text us the rest of the details. And they were out in 10 minutes, up in the sky on their way.

00:05:13:22 – 00:05:16:03
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE: STAR 11, Link Centre, go ahead.

00:05:16:05 – 00:05:20:19
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – Glen Pilon: Skids up, outbound to the scene call in Laird. Four souls on board.

00:05:20:22 – 00:05:31:24
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE: STAR 11, roger, Link Centre, I copy. Up with four souls, outbound Laird area scene call. We have Laird fire on provincial fire for your landing zone.

00:05:31:26 – 00:05:46:24
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Glen and Bailey were already deep into preparation mode. You’ll recall they had received an early alert from their off-duty manager, Daniel Kobylak, who was also a STARS flight paramedic and a volunteer first responder in his community not far from Laird, where Draidyn was fighting for life.

00:05:46:27 – 00:05:55:11
Bailey: Glen and I spoke about it. We obviously knew as soon as we got the information that we were going to go on this call, and we wanted to help this kid out.

00:05:55:14 – 00:06:05:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: On the way out the door, they grabbed medications and other items, including a cooler containing two units of type O-Negative blood, and they secured it safely in place at the back of the helicopter.

00:06:05:14 – 00:07:01:12
Bailey: So, on the way to the call we tend to do a lot of pre-planning. We talk about different differential diagnoses, different things that we might need to do for treatment, different things that might be going wrong with the person. We prepare some medications. We prepared some upper blood tubing in case we need to administer some blood. We prepared some pain medication. Just a few things. It was a very quick flight. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. Just as we were kind of arriving on scene, we still really didn’t have any other information. We were circling for a landing, and I remember somebody from the ground calling up to us. And like, that doesn’t generally happen that often except for landing zone information. And I remember somebody calling up to us trying to give us more information. I believe it was at that time they had told us that the lawnmower was still on Draidyn, and that things were not looking good.

00:07:01:14 – 00:07:13:22
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Let’s take a minute to tell you how Glen and Bailey got here. Glen’s been a paramedic for about 30 years. He joined STARS just a couple years after the Saskatchewan government invited us to establish a base in Saskatoon.

00:07:13:25 – 00:07:50:26
Glen Pilon: So I was with Saskatchewan Air Ambulance when STARS started up in Saskatchewan 10 years ago. And for the first couple of years, I watched to see how it unfolded in Saskatchewan. And their hangar was right beside our hangar, by the airplanes. And so I would go over and talk with all of my colleagues that I knew, because some of them would work with air ambulance, and some of them would work with STARS. And, they told me, why don’t you have a seat in the helicopter here, Glen? See how it feels. And I sat in the helicopter…

00:07:50:26 – 00:07:51:28
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And how did it feel?

00:07:52:00 – 00:07:57:21
Glen Pilon: Oh, I put my application in that that evening. Yeah. And here I am.

00:07:57:23 – 00:08:09:09
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And what about Bailey? Well, critical care nursing runs in her family, so it was a natural fit to spend the first six years of her career as a registered nurse in emergency medicine and in an ICU before applying for a job at STARS.

00:08:09:11 – 00:08:19:24
Bailey: I thought it was a very neat combination of both the pre-hospital and in-hospital environment, and I just wanted to be able to help people where they needed, to help them both.

00:08:19:27 – 00:08:22:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Okay, so they both like their role, but are they good at it?

00:08:22:27 – 00:08:45:19
Glen Pilon: Yeah, this is the one thing that I really love about STARS is you have six different bases, all across Western Canada, and you can plop anyone into any position, and they are trained exactly the same. So, it doesn’t matter the name on the on the chest. You can work with anyone because we are trained exactly the same at STARS.

00:08:45:19 – 00:09:26:07
Bailey: We’re so lucky in our training as nurses and paramedics. We are cross-trained, so I am trained to do the same things that paramedics train to do. The paramedics can do the same things I can do. We tend to stick more to our strengths, but the fact that we have the same education and the same learning experience is so beneficial to us. And like Glen said, like, I work in all three of the provinces as a pool nurse; I can jump on a helicopter in Grand Prairie, I know where everything’s located. And I know that the person I’m working with, even if I’ve never worked with them before, I know we’re going to have a good call because we’ve been trained the exact same way, and STARS training is just one of the best experiences and probably some of the best training out there.

00:09:26:10 – 00:09:39:05
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Every new member of our clinical team must first pass the rigorous STARS Critical Care and Transport Medicine Academy, or STARS Academy for short. That intense education was fresh in Bailey’s mind when Draidyn’s call came in.

00:09:39:07 – 00:10:08:10
Bailey: I had just finished my training about three weeks prior. So, to work for STARS, you have to do some pretty intensive training. It’s about a 20-week program involving a lot of in-person training as well as online training, lots of simulation and a lot of ride-along shifts. So, we are provided this very excellent training, and then all of a sudden you’re placed into the world on your own and you no longer have that person there to help you when you need it.

00:10:08:12 – 00:10:17:22
Co-host Deborah Tetley: They were going to have to use all their training on this mission. As they approached with limited information, every crew member was assessing what they were about to face.

00:10:17:24 – 00:10:50:15
Glen Pilon: I picture in my mind, you know, just a push-behind lawnmower with a blade underneath it and how a 16-year-old can get underneath one of those. But you fly out and you get more information coming in that it’s a commercial-grade or industrial-grade lawnmower. And he’s underneath that. And we also got word that the blade was still in his chest and that the first responders who were on scene were going to wait for us to get there until– before they removed the lawnmower off of him.

00:10:50:17 – 00:11:00:05
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: STARS helicopter missions always involve two pilots: one to focus on flying, the other to focus on safety and communication logistics. Yves Bolduc was flying this mission.

00:11:00:08 – 00:11:18:12
Yves Bolduc: What I remember is they landed us fairly close, you know, to the scene. We’re just in a field, you know. There was a road, you know, right behind the helicopter, and there was the following field that was pretty much beside the arena where the actual scene was.

00:11:18:14 – 00:11:33:01
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Beside him was safety pilot Alex Parra. After 10 years at STARS, this would be one of Alex’s last shifts before beginning a new flying career overseas. We caught up with him through Zoom a year later, and the details of the mission were still clear in his memory.

00:11:33:03 – 00:12:17:05
Alex: This scene was very traumatic because I had never seen anybody eaten by a lawnmower that way. You can see, like, the whole blades were on top of the kid, and the only visible part of his body was the head and one shoulder. I don’t remember if it was left or right, but… And based on the people he was around, they said that basically his body stopped the machine. So you can imagine the severity of the injuries that a body can, you know, get from those blades turning to make the whole thing stop. And obviously, immediately you think, oh, this is crazy. This is, this is something serious.

00:12:17:07 – 00:12:22:20
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And now, a quick word from our Season 2 sponsor.

00:12:22:23 – 00:12:58:01
Co-host Deborah Tetley: As Canada’s third largest natural gas producer and the largest producer of condensate, ARC Resources is proud to play an important role in the responsible development of Canada’s energy resources in delivering those resources. Safety is the number one priority, always, and it’s that core value that makes ARC’s partnership with STARS a natural fit. It’s our shared goal to ensure that everyone arrives home safely at the end of the day. Learn more about how ARC is leading the way for safe and responsible energy development at arcresources.com.

00:12:58:04 – 00:13:06:11
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Welcome back. Moments after the STARS helicopter landed in the nearby green space, flight nurse Bailey Sinclair took stock of what she saw.

00:13:06:14 – 00:14:18:05
Bailey: So, at that point, we’re already there. We can see the scene. There’s all these people, all these first responders. I swear most of the community was out there helping Draidyn. Quite the amazing response from the small town first responder group. So, very good on them. I remember landing on the scene and, like, our training is absolutely incredible. It is the most in-depth, best learning experience I’ve ever, ever had. But being a nurse who works in a hospital, you’re not really exposed to that pre-hospital environment. So, I think I had only done a few scene calls in my learning experience, and to walk up in a call where the lawnmower was still on Draidyn, and all you could see was his head and his arm sticking out from under the lawnmower, that’s like an experience I cannot describe. It’s just, it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like I said, they do the best to prepare you as much as they can, but nothing prepares you for that. I remember getting over to the patient. One of the EMS providers had walked over and kind of given us an update on what they had done, where they were at.

00:14:18:07 – 00:14:20:14
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Glen remembers that conversation too.

00:14:20:16 – 00:14:32:07
Glen Pilon: One of the paramedics from the ground ambulance came over, and we knew each other from previous calls and working together, and he said, Glen, this is very bad. This is really bad.

00:14:32:10 – 00:14:38:24
Co-host Deborah Tetley: That ground paramedic was Gilbert Maraboto with Rosthern EMS, who you met in the previous episode.

00:14:38:27 – 00:14:57:10
Gilbert Maraboto: When they landed, I met them at the landing site and I talk about, like, with Glen —I worked with Glen before, in the ambulance; he used to work with us in Rosthern too — and I remember sitting there, like, no, this is bad. This is very bad. I don’t know if he’s going to survive. As soon as we remove those blades, I’m pretty sure he won’t survive.

00:14:57:12 – 00:15:23:19
Glen Pilon: Yeah, it was really tough. And, so, when we walked over to where he was, you could see this large, industrial-size lawnmower, and he was completely underneath the blades of the lawnmower lying on his back with only his head and his right arm sticking out from underneath the lawnmower. And he was trapped under there, basically.

00:15:23:19 – 00:15:53:18
Bailey: They explained to us they were ready to lift this lawnmower off at any time, but they were waiting for us because they were worried that he might not make it once they lifted the lawnmower off of him. So, we got over to Draidyn. He was kind of in and out of consciousness, just gasping for air. He had an IV in the one arm that was out from the lawnmower. So immediately I started giving him blood.

00:15:53:21 – 00:16:04:06
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Let’s pause here for just a second. Remember that cooler of blood Deb mentioned earlier? The one Glen and Bailey grabbed before heading out on this mission? The story of how that cooler came to be is an interesting one.

00:16:04:08 – 00:16:13:21
Glen Pilon: When I started here, we never carried any blood at all. And then because of a patient that required blood, initiatives were taken so that we would carry blood on board.

00:16:13:23 – 00:16:44:10
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Back in 2012, a woman named Carrie Derin was critically injured in an off-road vehicle mishap. At that point in STARS’ history, we weren’t carrying blood on board the helicopter, but Carrie desperately needed it. She was being cared for by a Regina STARS crew. They made a rapid pit stop at a small-town hospital to get a unit of blood started on her before continuing on to a trauma centre. That proved to be life-saving. Now, Carrie lived and became a strong STARS ally, and the mission spurred some deeper thought for Saskatchewan provincial director Darcy McKay.

00:16:44:12 – 00:17:20:21
Darcy McKay: I was back at the base listening to this call and I thought, man, we’re taking time away from that patient, and we’re also taking that blood away from that hospital. And I thought, there’s got to be a better way. And so I just started looking at things, how can we have blood on board? And we looked at a variety of things. And then I came across these credo boxes that they actually used in the Iraq War, on the front lines. And I thought, maybe we can do something like that here. And so we had the lab transfusions from Regina General Hospital and Canadian Blood Services and the ministry on board. And, yeah, we made it happen. And it’s kind of cascaded across all of our bases. It’s awesome. It’s truly made a difference in patients’ lives.

00:17:20:23 – 00:17:25:26
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Well, and it’s not just every base at STARS that carries it now. We paved the road for others as well, didn’t we?

00:17:25:26 – 00:17:39:18
Darcy McKay: Correct. It’s across North America, and actually, yeah– I’m going to say North America, yeah. So, lots of places are copying the model and that’s fantastic. It’s all about patient care.

00:17:39:21 – 00:17:51:28
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Back in Laird, STARS has just landed and the medical response is underway on Draidyn. With time running short, Glen and Bailey dig deep into their extensive training and do everything they can to give him a fighting chance.

00:17:52:00 – 00:18:21:29
Bailey: When we arrived on scene, I had that initial shock moment of, wow, this is nothing I’ve ever experienced before. This is scary, this is bad. But then I think that’s the time when your training kicks in and you know what you need to do. Like I said, that training is very intense, it is very thorough. And we practice and practice and practice, and that’s why we’re good at what we do. And that’s why we can turn it on when somebody needs it the most.

00:18:22:01 – 00:19:38:22
Glen Pilon: Yeah, he is on ground level, he’s on his back, he’s looking up to the sky, and he has his right arm sticking out from underneath the lawnmower, right beside the wheel. And just from his neck up is all that we can see, really. And so we set up right at the head and we get all of our equipment out, we get all of our intubation equipment out, we get our bag valve mask, we get our oxygen out. And he had what we call, like, agonal breaths, like a very difficult breathing. And you try and palpate his radial pulse down by his wrist, and you can’t find one. And you try and palpate a brachial pulse by his elbow, and you can’t find one. And you can get your hand in to palpate the pulse around his neck, and he’s got a very weak pulse at his neck. And from my 30 years of experience, when somebody is trapped like that and very hypotensive and with difficulty breathing, you know that they only have about 10 minutes left to live. So, that was tough. That was really hard. Sorry. I kind of get a little emotional at these things,

00:19:38:22 – 00:19:46:11
Co-host Deborah Tetley: No, don’t apologize. Yeah, I appreciate that’s probably just one of the hardest calls to go on.

00:19:46:13 – 00:20:01:27
Glen Pilon: Yeah. Pediatric calls are some of the toughest calls to deal with because they have their whole life ahead of them, right?

00:20:02:00 – 00:20:06:14
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: As Bailey and Glen set to work, pilots Yves and Alex helped them wherever they could.

00:20:06:21 – 00:20:17:12
Yves Bolduc: The moment we land at any scenes, we become support, you know, to our guys who are trying, you know, to save a life. And we’ll do everything else that we can, you know, just to support them properly.

00:20:17:18 – 00:20:32:18
Co-host Deborah Tetley: I’m always fascinated by that. You know, you’re not just flying the helicopter and then standing there doing nothing, right? Like you really are a part of this life-saving mission in more ways than getting the helicopter there. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What sort of things were you doing exactly that day?

00:20:32:20 – 00:21:27:28
Yves Bolduc: I’m just going to be right in there, you know, to try to help them out and whatnot. But at the same time, it’s not push people around. Not at all. By the time you get to a scene, if EMS is already there, if fire is already there, they already have people that have been assigned specific duties at the scene themselves, right? So we become, you know, again, that support from behind, because we have some specific, you know, equipment, you know, that only STARS, you know, carries. And because of that, that’s– the type of running around that we’re doing around that day is, can you get us this bag because EMS did not have it, nor any of the firefighters had that type of equipment. And because we’re just a bit parked a little bit further away for security reasons, obviously, you know, we, you know, we’re there just to run back and forth. So I remember Alex, seeing Alex running back and forth, or I was running back and forth.

00:21:28:00 – 00:21:31:17
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Alex was spurred on by the look he saw in Glen and Bailey’s faces.

00:21:31:23 – 00:21:58:03
Alex Parra: I don’t remember exactly what was the situation of the kid at that point, but I immediately, in my mind, and by the signs that the crew kind of make with the eyes, we were– okay, this is serious. So I start running to the helicopter and I went ahead of the game and I started bringing them stuff. I brought the blood, I remember I ran to the helicopter probably four or five times to bring equipment as the crew was instructing me to bring stuff, you know.

00:21:58:06 – 00:22:15:21
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Helping out at traumatic scenes comes naturally for many of our pilots. A large portion of them have military experience, which can often prepare them for the types of dynamic and potentially distressing situations inherent in STARS missions. For Alex, before his decade at STARS, he had actually flown helicopters for the Colombian Air Force.

00:22:15:23 – 00:22:51:29
Alex Parra: Obviously, everybody knows, Colombia, we have gone through a conflict, internal conflict that actually has developed a lot of violence in the country. And all the institutions, government institutions, are trying to control this situation. And Air Force is one of them. As you be part of the Air Force, we were doing missions of medevac all the time. We were doing, you know, military missions. And you get exposed to seeing things that you’re normally not supposed to see.

00:22:52:01 – 00:22:58:01
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: So, when he joined STARS, it came naturally to support his medical colleagues however he could. This mission was no exception.

00:22:58:04 – 00:23:54:03
Alex Parra: I remember on the ground opening, I think, Bailey’s — It was one of the first missions that Bailey did after she finished her training. And for her, I could see on her face that she was really, you know, into the mission. And, because that’s what she was trained for. And Glen as well. Glen is a great paramedic with a lot of experience at STARS. And I remember myself opening bags, instructed by Bailey or by Glen when they said, Alex, give me this, give me that, like, I mean, all the bags that we have. And I just, you know, not even thinking, opening, setting up things. I remember opening the blood. I was the one that opened it, the blood cooler, cut the seals, take the unit out and, you know. And that helps a lot because a lot of the times they need that extra set of hands.

00:23:54:05 – 00:24:04:15
Co-host Deborah Tetley: One very important step had already been taken by a ground ambulance crew. This was starting a large bore IV line in Draidyn’s arm. Bailey explains this.

00:24:04:17 – 00:24:45:20
Bailey: So when we got to the scene, Draidyn had a large IV in his anticubital, or the kind of crease of his elbow there. The large IV lines are very helpful for us when we need to administer products really quickly. So, if you think of a garden hose, the bigger the garden hose, the more water flow you get through it. The smaller the garden hose, the less flow you get through it. So that works similar as an intravenous line. The bigger the IV, the faster we can give that blood product. So, the first responders on scene really helped us out by getting that large IV. And I think we were able to get the first unit of blood in before the lawnmower was even lifted off of Draidyn.

00:24:45:22 – 00:24:51:24
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Kayla Burrell was among several first responders helping at the scene. She had an important job.

00:24:51:27 – 00:25:31:25
Kayla Burrell: You know, at the end, I was holding the blood bag so that the blood could start flowing to Draidyn. And one of my fellow firefighters asked, Do you, like, want me to take over? Can I hold it? That was when I was like, No, I’m good. Like, this is– I wanted to do more. Like, this is all I can do right now is hold this blood. And, you just, you want to, you want to do more, you want to fix him right there. And, so, if that’s all I could do was hold that blood, that was important to me. And knowing that was critical, that his life was… he was fading.

00:25:31:27 – 00:25:35:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Next time on Mission Ready:

00:25:35:05 – 00:25:55:12
Glen Pilon: And so we go ahead and make our intubation attempt. When I go to put the blade in, the top of the laryngoscope handle where the cord is, it hits the lawnmower and it is stuck there, and I’m not able to lift up in order to see the epiglottis that I need to see.

00:25:55:15 – 00:26:03:19
Bailey: And I was kind of thinking, what is going to happen once we lift this lawnmower off of him?

00:26:03:21 – 00:26:08:25
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources, is produced in-house by me, Deborah Tetley.

00:26:08:27 – 00:26:14:20
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And me, Lyle Aspinall. Watch video clips from this season at stars.ca/missionready.

00:26:14:23 – 00:26:31:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready contains original theme music by Kaiya Gamble, whose dad was a long time STARS pilot and whose mom was once a transport physician. Check her out at kaiyagamble.com. Please rate and review Mission Ready wherever you found it, and be sure to tell your friends about it. Also, check out Season 1.

00:26:31:14 – 00:26:37:26
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Want to be a STARS ally? Get involved and support our mission by visiting stars.ca. Until next time, thanks for listening.

00:00:01:28 – 00:00:33:13
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Before we start, a word of caution. As you know, STARS provides pre-hospital care for critically ill and injured patients who have sustained severe trauma or debilitating illnesses. It’s what we do. As such, some of the details in this podcast may be difficult for some listeners. The STARS mission being explored this season involves graphic descriptions of physical injuries to a youth. Psychological impacts are also detailed. The patients, family, and supporters have generously allowed us to tell this story as a personalized insight into STARS.

00:00:33:16 – 00:01:07:18
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And for that, we are genuinely grateful. The community, and everyone else who was involved, welcomed us with open arms to help us tell this story. Having spent time with about 20 people researching it and recording interviews on the phone, virtually, in studio, and right at the scene of the incident, we can tell you this: our conversations were raw and candid, and as such, some of the details uncomfortable. For this podcast, we’ve endeavoured to tell the story accurately without being too sensational. Still, listener discretion is advised.

00:01:07:21 – 00:01:28:01
Christine Wollmann: Knowing that I was crying and upset, and then I’m like, all I thought was that, okay, this kid needs me. So I corrected my behaviour. I don’t know how I did it, but I did it. I just did my job with being a first responder and just started treating him as a patient instead of my own kid.

00:01:28:04 – 00:01:35:15
Chris: When I got on scene, you could just see people everywhere, and I just jumped right into helping out with whatever I could.

00:01:35:18 – 00:01:44:06
Kayla Burrell: We first responders are not machines. We are people just like you. What drives us is a passion for helping people and being there for our community.

00:01:44:08 – 00:01:59:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Welcome to Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources. This STARS podcast breaks down in detail one mission each season to give you a stronger understanding of how we provide critical care anywhere, and what happens before and after the mission. I’m Deborah Tetley.

00:01:59:12 – 00:02:17:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And I’m Lyle Aspinall. In Season 2, we’re analyzing an emergency response to a traumatic incident where a teenager was run over by an industrial-sized riding lawnmower in Laird, Saskatchewan. This is Episode 2: First Response.

00:02:17:06 – 00:02:37:07
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: It’s July 19th, 2022, and Draidyn Wollmann, a 16-year-old boy, is still trapped under an industrial lawnmower and fighting for his life. STARS is on the way, and with him right now are EMS, firefighters, RCMP, and first responders. Most of these people are volunteers, just everyday folks helping their communities.

00:02:37:10 – 00:03:04:04
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Draidyn’s mom, Christine, is also there, as are his grandparents. Christine is a first responder and a volunteer firefighter. She learned about the call early on and rushed to the scene, but RCMP kept her from approaching her son as other response personnel did their work. It goes without saying the family is reeling. One of the initial first responders to arrive is Kayla Burrell, who you met in the previous episode.

00:03:04:06 – 00:03:37:07
Kayla Burrell: We first responders are not machines. We are people just like you. Just like you. Just like me. What drives us is a passion for helping people and being here for our community. So, we were trained really well in Waldheim and just had the best leaders and resources to be the best we could be. I think most of us have it under our belt where we can remain calm. You know, our heart’s racing, but you have to, you just have to be calm or you can’t think straight and you can’t use your skills to help.

00:03:37:10 – 00:03:44:24
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Yeah. Staying calm in that kind of environment. Wow. But paint us a picture. When you get to Laird, when you get to Draidyn’s scene, what do you see?

00:03:45:00 – 00:05:41:21
Kayla Burrell: Yeah, it was behind the arena in Laird and just kind of a grassy field area. And there was a pickup truck with, you know, the people who found him, and it was just a mower in the middle with Draidyn fully under. And where we saw, we came up on the right side of the mower, and his head and arm were out on the left side. So, what we thought was, we didn’t see anything when we were first coming up. And that was what’s really scary, you know? But thankfully we came up and, again, I’m adrenaline-rushed, scared because this is really going to test my skills, right? And we want to do right by him. So we walk over. We kind of got some history from the bystanders. How long he thought he’d been there. I made contact right away. “Hi, I’m Kayla Burrell. I’m with the Waldheim first responders. We’re here to help you.” You know, things we ask: How long you’ve been here. What’s your name? You know, I asked, Who’s your mom? Do you know what happened? Or, how long you’ve been here? You know what day it is, what month it is, just to see, you know, how with it he was. And he was. He was talking to me. He knew everything that was going on. What really struck me was that he told me, It’s in my lungs, he said. Like, the blades. He said, It’s in my lungs. And so, you know, we check pulse, we check oxygen. I had to wash the dry blood off his hands with hand sanitizer to get, you know, an oxygen level to read. Then we put oxygen on him right away. And then I continued asking questions, keeping him talking and just aware, because that’s what’s most important to me. Treating for shock, keeping him aware. And, you know, it was a really hot day. So I was concerned about that, you know, and under a hot mower. That, unfortunately, that wasn’t really something we could combat.

00:05:41:24 – 00:06:38:12
Co-host Deborah Tetley: It’s quickly determined that Draidyn urgently needs top-tier critical care, medical supplies, blood transfusions and urgent transport to the closest trauma centre, which is in Saskatoon, more than 60 km away. He need STARS. Shae Evans was working in the STARS Emergency Link Centre, or the ELC, when the call came in. This is our 24-hour communications hub where we not only dispatch our own helicopters and other medical aircraft, we also link pertinent people into calls. This can range from doctors at receiving or sending hospitals to witnesses on the scene, first responders, police, firefighters, and the people we rely on to prepare a safe landing zone for our helicopter. Shae had recently moved from a different position in the ELC, and was just starting to take critical patient calls on her own after months of training. Despite how busy the ELC is and despite how busy summers are, the details of this mission are etched in her memory.

00:06:38:15 – 00:07:29:14
Shae Evans: You know, in the summertime, especially like July, August, our volume just goes up so much. Like, we process probably about 100 calls a day from hospital and to pre-hospital calls. And I still, I remember that call. You know, normally, like, when you have 100 calls a day, you know, they all kind of start to blend. But that was probably one of my very first calls after just recently being signed off. So in the STARS Link Centre, you have six months of precept, so you can’t really take a call by yourself for six months. And they say typically it takes about a year to actually get really comfortable. But that was right after my sign-off and doing logistics too. So, dealing with the helicopter. And so that was really stressful. And then just, yeah, there’s kids calls. Like, anybody who has young kids, that typically takes a huge toll on anybody. You can just feel in the room with a traumatic event and with a kid, you can just feel the, you know, the tension in the room.

00:07:29:14 – 00:07:37:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: And you talked about room awareness and how the mood in the room changes when it’s a kid. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What did you see? What was the feeling in this case?

00:07:37:23 – 00:07:50:12
Shae Evans: Yeah, I think everybody took a really, like, a deep breath, like, it’s going to be a hard call. But you know, we’re here to do a job and we do our job well up there. And, you know, we take care of ourselves and our family. But yeah, we do our job first.

00:07:50:14 – 00:08:02:29
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Even though the duty crew has already had a heads up that this call might be coming. Shae handled the dispatch, speaking with one of the pilots who will fly the helicopter to Laird: Capt. Alex Parra.

00:08:03:01 – 00:08:07:12
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Shae Evans: STAR 11, Link Centre. You’re on pre-alert for a scene call, 13 nautical miles northwest of Rosthern in Laird.

00:08:07:12 – 00:08:11:01
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Alex Parra: Link Centre, STAR 11 copies, standby, weather.

00:08:11:03 – 00:08:12:17
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Shae Evans: Standing by for weather.

00:08:12:19 – 00:08:16:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: The weather was great, so the pilots had no concerns about accepting the mission.

00:08:16:06 – 00:08:22:04
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Shae Evans: Copy, misstion accepted.

00:08:22:07 – 00:08:22:09
ELC: (dispatch tones)

00:08:22:09 – 00:08:26:07
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Shae Evans: STAR 11, Link Centre, you’ve been dispatched to the scene call in the town of Laird.

00:08:26:09 – 00:08:31:00
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Alex Parra: Copy, Link Centre. Dispatched to the scene call, and standby for coordinates.

00:08:31:01 – 00:08:38:06
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Shae Evans: STAR 11, Link Centre, coordinates as follows: 52 43 by 106 35.

00:08:38:09 – 00:08:41:18
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Alex Parra: 52 43 – 106 35.

00:08:41:18 – 00:08:42:20
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Shae Evans: Readback correct .

00:08:42:23 – 00:08:52:19
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: At 3:10 in the afternoon, the STARS helicopter lifted off the ground, carrying flight paramedic Glen Pilon and flight nurse Bailey Sinclair. Alex Parra and Yves Bolduc were the pilots.

00:08:52:21 – 00:08:54:04
ELC: STAR 11, Link Centre, go ahead.

00:08:54:06 – 00:08:58:17
ELC – Glen: Skids up, outbound to the scene call in Laird. Four souls on board.

00:08:58:17 – 00:09:10:11
ELC: STAR 11, roger, Link Centre, I copy. Up with four souls, outbound Laird area scene call. We have Laird fire on provincial fire for your landing zone.

00:09:10:13 – 00:09:25:00
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: No one knows how long Draidyn had been under the mower. At that point, the best estimate said it might have been an hour before he was discovered by his boss, Warren. Time wasn’t on their side. Draidyn was fading, and Kayla could only continue to comfort him.

00:09:25:02 – 00:09:36:21
Kayla Burrell: He was getting slower to talk back. You know, a little more gap time where he’d relax and I’d have to prompt him to stay awake. Promt him and just keep talking.

00:09:36:24 – 00:09:52:23
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Other than monitor his oxygen levels, there wasn’t much anyone could do for Draidyn medically until the mower was removed. Paramedic Gil Maraboto, from nearby Rosthern, set out to determine if it was possible to remove it without causing further damage. He reached his arm under the mower to investigate.

00:09:52:26 – 00:10:44:25
Gil Maraboto: So I put my hand underneath and like, try to see what he refers to, like the pressure on the chest, because I can’t see. So like, well, I can feel it. So I start, like, moving on his abdomen, and it was good, and as soon as I started going up slowly, eventually, like, I feel like that’s something, like, hard, like, oh, the blade, like, it’s, like, oh yeah, the blade is inside his chest. So all the ribs were open on the right side. The blade was, I think, the blades stopped at some point, obviously and was stuck between the ribs and underneath, and everything was open in there, and I felt his arm, like, the first thing, the one other thing, when I keep going, one of– his left arm was, like, in two pieces. Like, okay, that’s not good. And I started to keep going down…

00:10:44:27 – 00:10:53:29
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Gil knew that removing the mower could cause damage, and the crews on the ground were not equipped to respond if Draidyn’s condition deteriorated. He decided to call the STARS doctor.

00:10:54:01 – 00:11:21:15
Gil Maraboto: And so, I told the guys, you know, guys, like, there’s not much we can do. Let me call. Let me call the transport physician. I don’t know what I’m gonna do here because if we remove it right here and we’re by ourselves, I don’t know what we can do. Like, I want to just be sure that STARS is coming and see what we can do, because I don’t, honestly, I don’t know. Like, at this point we can give something for the bleeding and some TXA, and that’s it. There’s not much that can be done, and…

00:11:21:18 – 00:11:29:20
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: He activated his radio and spoke with the Medical Communication and Coordination Centre in Saskatchewan, asking to be connected to the STARS Emergency Link Centre.

00:11:29:22 – 00:11:30:29
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Sharlene Ernst: … Sharlene speaking…

00:11:31:06 – 00:11:35:27
MCCC: Hi, it’s MCC Central. I’ve got a Rosthern EMS attendant on the line regarding that Laird call.

00:11:35:29 – 00:11:39:25
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Sharlene Ernst: Perfect. Send them through and I will link them in with the transport physician.

00:11:39:27 – 00:11:40:11
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Sharlene Ernst: Hello?

00:11:40:15 – 00:11:40:24
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Hi.

00:11:41:01 – 00:11:44:05
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Gil Maraboto: We have, like, a pretty serious case in here, so…

00:11:44:12 – 00:11:48:08
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Sharlene Ernst: Okay, I’m going to link you in with the transport physician Dr. Oyedokun. One moment.

00:11:48:11 – 00:11:49:16
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Gil Maraboto: Thank you.

00:11:49:18 – 00:12:21:19
Co-host Deborah Tetley: We’re going to pause for just a second to explain what a transport physician is. STARS uses a physician-led model where doctors oversee care, train crews, and ensure quality control. STARS physicians provide patient care and medical expertise for all missions, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and they are available to provide timely, consultative advice and guidance to other emergency services as required. These doctors have significant experience treating trauma patients in emergency departments and ICUs.

00:12:21:21 – 00:12:35:18
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: STARS transport physician Dr. Segun Oyedokun was on the phone talking to EMS and firefighters at the scene while the STARS air medical crew was en route. Ground paramedic Gil Maraboto explained the situation.

00:12:35:20 – 00:12:36:00
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Hello.

00:12:36:07 – 00:12:42:12
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Sharlene Ernst: Hey, Dr. Oyedokun, it’s Sharlene again. I’ve got the EMS on scene with the young man that’s trapped under the mower.

00:12:42:14 – 00:12:42:26
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Okay.

00:12:43:03 – 00:12:44:11
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Sharlene Ernst: Thank you. One moment.

00:12:44:14 – 00:12:46:18
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Gil Maraboto: Hi, this is Gilbert from Rosthern Ambulance.

00:12:46:20 – 00:12:46:23
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Yes.

00:12:46:23 – 00:13:29:07
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Gil Maraboto: We’re here on the scene with a 16-year-old that got trapped under a riding lawnmower. His left leg is totally, totally wrapped into the blades, and one of the blades is in his chest. So I’m trying to see what would be the best way to take him out from the lawnmower. Do we just remove the lawnmower out and see how bad it is, the blade in his chest? Or we should proceed different in this case? Like, no one can see yet. We only can see the blade, like, loose in, like… The chest is blocking the whole blade. So we’re assuming the blade is inside his chest. And the left leg is completely wrapped around the blade.

00:13:29:07 – 00:13:29:18
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Oh, wow.

00:13:29:21 – 00:13:41:12
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Gil Maraboto: I’m just waiting for STARS to land here. Yeah, I don’t know how to remove it from the lawnmower without… We have to take it off, like, move the lawnmower back. But I don’t know how much damage we’re going to cause while doing that.

00:13:41:15 – 00:13:44:01
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Is he conscious and breathing?

00:13:44:04 – 00:13:57:17
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Gil Maraboto: Yeah, he’s conscious and breathing, talking. He has, like, response and everything. His stats are, like, 96. We’re checking the blood pressure right now. We put on– There’s one arm available, so we put an IV to that arm.

00:13:57:19 – 00:13:57:23
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Okay.

00:13:57:23 – 00:14:02:02
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Gil Maraboto: And we’re going to check the blood pressure and see how he’s doing. He has oxygen already running.

00:14:02:04 – 00:14:04:15
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Okay. So, which side of the chest?

00:14:04:21 – 00:14:07:21
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Gil Maraboto: Left, left centre. Yeah, left centre, so. Yeah.

00:14:07:23 – 00:14:17:04
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Okay, so this is where, I think, fire can come in. Do you have fire rescue services there with you?

00:14:17:06 – 00:14:25:19
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Gil Maraboto: We have a volunteer team, so we can, like, I can put you through…

00:14:25:21 – 00:14:30:21
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And now, a quick word from our Season 2 sponsor.

00:14:30:24 – 00:15:05:21
ARC Resources ad spot: As Canada’s third largest natural gas producer and the largest producer of condensate, ARC Resources is proud to play an important role in the responsible development of Canada’s energy resources. In delivering those resources, safety is the number one priority, always, and it’s that core value that makes ARC’s partnership with STARS a natural fit. It’s our shared goal to ensure that everyone arrives home safely at the end of the day. Learn more about how ARC is leading the way for safe and responsible energy development at arcresources.com.

00:15:05:23 – 00:15:27:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Welcome back. Dr. Oyedokun has worked at the Saskatoon STARS base since it opened in 2012, and has helped many patients through critical care needs over the years. He still remembers the details of this particular incident, though, much like everyone else we spoke with. He said it was one of two unrelated calls that happened simultaneously for STARS, and it was up to him to decide which one the crew would respond to.

00:15:27:07 – 00:16:35:24
Dr. Segun Oyedokun: So, interestingly, there were two calls at the same time that needed STAR 11’s attention. There was another stab wound, but that one, EMS was close by, and that patient wasn’t too far from from a bigger hospital. So we felt comfortable that EMS could assess and transfer the patient to the nearby hospital. And so it was a clear choice that we were needed for this patient that got trapped under the lawnmower. So, yes, it was a bit of a shock. As a parent, too, I mean, I have two boys about that age, so it’s like, oh, yeah, this is serious. Let’s get moving. But the good thing about the system is, this is one of those instances where the air medical crew did not need my or any other transport physician’s permission to launch. It was serious enough for them to launch, and I just kind of communicated with them through the ELC or got updates while they were on the way. And at the right time, I actually had direct contact with them.

00:16:35:27 – 00:16:39:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Can you walk me through, sort of, what it is you said to them and why?

00:16:39:18 – 00:18:38:22
Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Yes. So, one of the basic principles of trauma care, especially when you think there’s a foreign body embedded in the body, is not to remove the foreign body. One of the reasons for that is, sometimes the foreign body may have damaged or transected a blood vessel. So when you remove the foreign body, it just provokes severe bleeding. So, as much as possible, you want to leave that foreign body inside. The challenge in this case was, I couldn’t get a clear mental picture of exactly what was going on. What I heard was, it looks like one of the blades was stuck in the patient’s chest. So the challenge now is, how do you remove the lawnmower from the patient without removing the foreign body that is stuck in the body? But later it dawned on me that the entire patient was actually stuck under the deck in between the blades. So, it’s not just a matter of maybe smacking off a small foreign body, leaving it stuck in the body, and removing the rest of it. The patient was actually entirely stuck. So, I think one — if I remember correctly — one thing I said was, whatever you’re going to do, whether we’re going to remove the lawnmower completely or to separate the patient from the lawnmower, please, just let’s buy some time. Let’s wait for our team to get there. Then they can provide the critical resuscitation needed regardless of what is going on. So, my initial assessment was, Okay, yeah, this person is fairly stable right now, but there’s potential for rapid deterioration with penetrating injury; obviously bleeding, internal and external bleeding is of concern. And in this situation, gettng IV access, running IV fluid. And if blood is needed, to give him blood as soon as possible is life saving. Yeah. So getting our team there with blood was very important.

00:18:38:25 – 00:18:46:16
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: He relayed his concerns and advised responders on the ground to wait. STARS was almost on scene, and they were carrying blood on board the helicopter.

00:18:46:19 – 00:18:48:08
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Waldheim Fire Dept.: This is Waldhiem Fire, go ahead.

00:18:48:11 – 00:19:01:04
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Hi, is there any way to remove the part of the mower that is in the patient as opposed to separating the patient from the lawnmower?

00:19:01:10 – 00:19:15:27
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Waldheim Fire Dept.: No. Right now, he’s lodged in between the lawnmower and the deck itself. He’s sandwiched in there. His whole body is in— you know a lawnmower deck with the spinning blades? His whole body is underneath the lawnmower deck, and his head is sticking out.

00:19:16:01 – 00:19:29:27
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Okay, so the STARS medical crew will be there shortly. And my recommendation for now is perhaps to wait until they get there and–

00:19:30:00 – 00:19:30:26
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Waldheim Fire Dept.: Wait for STARS?

00:19:31:04 – 00:19:34:21
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Yeah, they’re coming. They’ll be, they should be there shortly.

00:19:34:21 – 00:19:37:11
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Waldheim Fire Dept.: They should be landing here within seconds.

00:19:37:13 – 00:19:53:25
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Within seconds. Okay, well, let them get there. I mean, we have to get him off of the lawnmower. If it means removing parts– ideally, we want to leave whatever is stuck in the patient for as long as possible.

00:19:53:25 – 00:19:55:01
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Waldheim Fire Dept.: Yeah. We’ll try.

00:19:55:03 – 00:20:14:21
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: So, that’s priority. But if not, we’re just going to have to remove him from the machine as much as possible. So wait a few more seconds for the team to get there. At least, when they get there, even when you remove him from the machine, you have extra medical support to take care of whatever you find.

00:20:14:24 – 00:20:16:28
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Waldheim Fire Dept.: Yeah, we’re trying to do that. I gotcha.

00:20:17:03 – 00:20:18:06
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Dr. Segun Oyedokun: Okay, thanks.

00:20:18:08 – 00:20:19:20
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Waldheim Fire Dept.: Okay. Bye.

00:20:19:22 – 00:20:27:06
Co-host Deborah Tetley: With STARS about to land close to Draidyn, members of the Laird Fire Department had prepared a landing zone in the adjacent field.

00:20:27:09 – 00:20:28:18
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – PROVINCIAL CALL CENTRE: Provincial Call Centre.

00:20:28:20 – 00:20:30:17
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Shae Evans: Hi there. Shae calling from STARS.

00:20:30:20 – 00:20:30:25
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – PROVINCIAL CALL CENTRE: Hi.

00:20:30:25 – 00:20:36:06
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Shae Evans: Hi, are you aware of this call out of Laird for a 16-year-old male? Are you guys attached?

00:20:36:06 – 00:20:39:05
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – PROVINCIAL CALL CENTRE: Laird fire has been dispatched.

00:20:39:07 – 00:20:44:28
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Shae Evans: Excellent. We’re going to be going out, and seeing, we just need a landing zone secured, please, for 20 minutes.

00:20:45:01 – 00:20:50:24
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – PROVINCIAL CALL CENTRE: Okay, we will notify them.

00:20:50:26 – 00:21:03:13
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Draidyn’s mom, Christine, had previously taken STARS landing zone training and helped to set up. You’ll recall that she had been asked by RCMP to stay away from her son. So she wanted to find some way to help.

00:21:03:16 – 00:22:10:06
Christine Wollmann: Knowing that I was crying and upset… And then I’m like, all I thought was that, Okay, this kid needs me. So I corrected my behaviour. I don’t know how I did it, but I did it. I just did my job with being a first responder and just started treating him as a patient instead of my own kid. We would have lots of practice scenarios with landing STARS, like just pretending that they were there. Like, we’re setting up because you have to set up a perimeter and you have to watch for debris, and you have to make sure that where you’re going to be landing them is going to be a safe area. So, then I started helping with getting everything ready for STARS landing. I know my dad has, like, loose lumber in the back of his truck, so I said, Dad, you got to move your truck because that’ll fly out. So I got everything all cleared away from where I saw that they were setting up and then STARS was hovering over top.

00:22:10:09 – 00:22:15:28
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: First responder Kayla Burrell remembers what she felt as the helicopter descended.

00:22:16:01 – 00:23:02:23
Kayla Burrell: A relief, absolutely a relief. We as first responders have just emergent care. Like, you know, just oxygen, keep them awake. You know, just treat shock, you know, and that’s kind of the extent of what we do. There’s a lot more to it. But we’re not… we’re not trained for this, you know, like, ongoing care, you know, when your body’s damaged like that. Because I even felt like the paramedics– I was like, I don’t know if they’re trained for this either, you know, but the STARS critical care team is exactly what he needed. And I just thought, thank goodness we have more support.

00:23:02:26 – 00:23:10:19
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Laird fire chief Chris Dennis had been out of town when he received the page for this call. He raced back from Saskatoon when he heard what happened.

00:23:10:21 – 00:23:54:00
Chris Dennis: As I came into town, STARS was just coming in for landing. I could see the helicopter coming down. As I got on the scene, when I got there, Christine was standing off to the side and said that they won’t allow– they won’t allow her to go over and see him. And all she knows is his head was sticking out of the– out from underneath the lawnmower. I said, Okay. I said, you know, you’ve got the right people here. We’re doing our best. And, I walked onto the scene and I assisted with the rescue.

00:23:54:02 – 00:24:12:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: This wasn’t just any incident for him. He and his family know the Wollmanns well. As you’ve already heard, his daughter Karleigh was good friends with Draidyn, and Chris and Christine volunteered together at the fire station. He knew about Draidyn’s summer job. So when that first call came in, even though there was no name attached, his heart sank.

00:24:12:06 – 00:24:58:04
Chris Dennis: Just deep down, I knew exactly who it was. I knew. I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew who it was. So unless it was some other kids mowing their own personal yard and had an accident, I knew what it was. And then, of course, having to call Christine to say we’re getting a bad call. Hang on. Our family and Draidyn’s family are very personal, very close friends. Draidyn’s mom is actually the lead first responder in our community, and she’s one of my firefighters. It’s, it’s emotional. It’s emotional. I mean, even right now, it’s very hard because that was, you know, personal, you know, and…

00:24:58:06 – 00:25:06:02
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Another first responder, Kevin Burrell, whose wife, Kayla, you heard from earlier, had immediately left Saskatoon as soon as he got word of the incident.

00:25:06:05 – 00:25:10:12
Kevin Burrell: When I got there, it was like there was a hockey game at the rink. There was so many cars parked around there.

00:25:10:12 – 00:25:21:07
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: As you recall, Kayla was already at Draidyn’s side. And remember: Kevin and Kayla, Chris Dennis and his family, Christine and her family — they’re all good friends.

00:25:21:10 – 00:25:46:04
Kevin Burrell: Laird and Waldheim work really closely together. We train together. We attend all of the calls together, and we socialize together. You know, two small towns that close together. Small farming community. We hang out after calls. We get together just for fun and that kind of thing. So, you know, Chrissy is a pretty good friend.

00:25:46:07 – 00:25:50:17
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: He was already aware that the trapped and struggling teenager was Christine’s son.

00:25:50:19 – 00:26:59:20
Kevin Burrell: In my 11 or so years as a firefighter and first responder, that was probably my most traumatic call as far as the seriousness of it. And when it’s a teenager or a kid, it seems to elevate the seriousness of the call for everybody. Having known who it is and being good friends with the family — worked with Chrissy a lot — that kind of makes it a little more close to home. But yeah, that’s probably most what makes it the hardest. I’ve seen enough serious enough incidents to… you can, just by looking at somebody, you can kind of tell if they’re going to make it or not. From looking at him, I didn’t think he was going to make it.

00:26:59:22 – 00:27:02:05
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Next time on Mission Ready.

00:27:02:08 – 00:27:17:10
Bailey: I remember landing on the scene. And like I said earlier, our training is absolutely incredible. It is the most in-depth, best learning experience I’ve ever had. But nothing prepares you for that. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

00:27:17:13 – 00:27:31:04
STARS flight paramedic Glen Pilon: From my 30 years of experience, when somebody is trapped like that and very hypotensive and with difficulty breathing, you know that they only have about 10 minutes left to live.

00:27:31:06 – 00:27:36:09
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources, is produced in-house by me, Deborah Tetley.

00:27:36:13 – 00:27:42:05
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And me, Lyle Aspinall Aspinall. Watch video clips from this season at STARS.ca/missionready.

00:27:42:07 – 00:27:58:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready contains original theme music by Kaiya Gamble, whose dad was a longtime STARS pilot and whose mom was once a transport physician. Check her out at kaiyagamble.com. Please rate and review Mission Ready wherever you found it, and be sure to tell your friends about it. Also, check out Season 1.

00:27:59:00 – 00:28:05:10
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Want to be a STARS ally? Get involved and support our mission by visiting STARS.ca. Until next time, thanks for listening.

00:00:01:28 – 00:00:33:22
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Before we start, a word of caution. As you know, STARS provides pre-hospital care for critically ill and injured patients who have sustained severe trauma or Co-host Deborah Tetleyilitating illnesses. It’s what we do. As such, some of the details in this podcast may be difficult for some listeners. The STARS mission being explored this season involves graphic descriptions of physical injuries to a youth. Psychological impacts are also detailed. The patient’s family and supporters have generously allowed us to tell this story as a personalized insight into STARS.

00:00:33:25 – 00:01:07:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And for that, we are genuinely grateful. The community, and everyone else who was involved, welcomed us with open arms to help us tell this story. Having spent time with about 20 people researching it and recording interviews on the phone, virtually, in studio, and right at the scene of the incident, we can tell you this: our conversations were raw and candid, and as such, some of the details uncomfortable. For this podcast, we’ve endeavoured to tell the story accurately without being too sensational. Still, listener discretion is advised.

00:01:07:18 – 00:01:13:19
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST: STAR 11, Link Centre, you’re on pre-alert for a scene call 13 nautical miles northwest of Rosthern in Laird.

00:01:13:19 – 00:01:16:04
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Pilot Alex Parra: Link Centre, STAR 11 copies. Standby, weather.

00:01:16:06 – 00:01:30:15
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST: We have a 16-year-old male who was trapped under a riding lawnmower. His whole body is trapped. Possible lung puncture. Behind the arena in the middle of the field. ALS is 25 minutes.

00:01:30:15 – 00:01:33:04
STARS flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

00:01:33:07 – 00:01:40:00
Warren Peters: You know, tell my mom and my brother that I love them, and it was like, oh, he’s going to… he’s going to be gone here.

00:01:40:00 – 00:01:47:17
Kevin Burrell: In my 11 or so years as a firefighter and first responder, that was probably my most traumatic call.

00:01:47:19 – 00:01:56:12
Christine Wollmann: And I thought to myself that I am burying my kid. He’s in a million pieces, knowing that there’s three blades underneath that mower deck.

00:01:56:14 – 00:02:09:27
STARS flight paramedic Glen Pilon: From my 30 years of experience, when somebody is trapped like that and very hypotensive and with difficulty breathing, you know that… they only have about 10 minutes left to live.

00:02:09:29 – 00:02:22:09
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: From STARS, this is Mission Ready, Season 2, presented by ARC Resources. Episode 1: Trapped Under a Lawnmower.

00:02:22:12 – 00:02:23:16
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: STAR 11 medical.

00:02:23:18 – 00:02:31:11
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST: Hey, guys. It’s Lindsay in the Link Centre. Just regarding this call in Laird, it’s a quick flight for you guys. You’re about a 16 minute flight.

00:02:31:14 – 00:02:46:16
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Welcome to Mission Ready, presented by ARC Resources. This STARS podcast breaks down in detail one mission each season to give you a stronger understanding of how we provide critical care anywhere, and what happens before and after the mission. I’m Co-host Deborah Tetley.

00:02:46:19 – 00:02:50:21
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And I’m Co-host Lyle Aspinall. We have the pleasure of being your hosts for this podcast.

00:02:50:23 – 00:03:22:22
Co-host Deborah Tetley: In our second season of Mission Ready. We’re breaking down a STARS call from the summer of 2022 that happened in the village of Laird, Saskatchewan, when a harrowing incident left a teenager, Draidyn Wollmann, critically injured and fighting for his life. You’ll meet many people who were there from the very beginning: his boss who found him and made the initial call to his mom, his friends, and the local emergency responders who helped along the way. You’ll learn about how our network of allies enables us to provide critical care anywhere.

00:03:22:25 – 00:03:44:10
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: You’ll also meet all four STARS crew members who were on duty, plus the off-duty STARS paramedic who attended, a call taker at the STARS Emergency Link Centre more than 650 km away, and the transport physician who guided the care. For STARS flight paramedic Glen Pilon, this would be one of the most horrific calls in the team’s combined 40-plus years of critical care experience.

00:03:44:13 – 00:03:53:00
STARS flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Pediatric calls are some of the toughest calls to deal with because they have their whole life ahead of them, right?

00:03:53:03 – 00:04:22:21
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Almost everything about July 19th, 2022, in Laird, Saskatchewan, was typical. The tiny village was quiet. No hustle or bustle. The sun was high in the sky, beating down, and the air was hot and thick. Students were enjoying summer vacation, hanging with friends or working odd jobs. Residents were relaxing on their decks. Some were counting down the hours until the end of the workday or simply toiling in the garden. The dog days of summer were on the horizon.

00:04:22:24 – 00:04:32:14
STARS flight paramedic Glen Pilon: Yeah, just a beautiful, sunny day. Here in Saskatchewan. Not a cloud in the sky. An absolutely gorgeous warm day.

00:04:32:21 – 00:05:45:27
Co-host Deborah Tetley: We say “almost” typical, because what happened just after the lunch hour was far from it. And the events that followed rocked this village of 275 residents. Laird is located in central Saskatchewan, about 67 km north of the city of Saskatoon via highway 12 and about an hour southwest of Prince Albert. It’s in the Saskatchewan River Valley and sits on the traditional lands of Stoney Knoll First Nation. There’s an arena, a baseball diamond, one school, and a handful of businesses, including a hotel, a grocery shop, and insurance office. Not far from the municipal office, there’s a lawnmower shop, which at one time was the manufacturing facility for the lawnmower type involved in this incident. There are a few new homes on the edge of town, and there’s an abundance of greenspace surrounding a playground. The closest hospital is in the neighboring town of Rosthern, a 20-minute drive and the closest trauma centre is in Saskatoon. A welcome sign at the edge of the village proclaims ‘The Community That Pulls Together.’

00:05:46:00 – 00:06:11:26
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Then 16-year-old Draidyn Wollmann was hired by the village of Laird to mow lawns for the summer. Not only had his older brother and his mother both done the same job before him, it was also his first job and he was saving up to buy a car. He was in his second week working for the village, beginning his shift around 8 am. He was slated to finish by about mid afternoon that day. Draidyn’s mom, Christine, remembers her son’s enthusiasm as he headed off to work just a short walk from the family home.

00:06:11:28 – 00:06:34:06
Christine Wollmann: It was a Tuesday, and Draidyn was so excited because Draidyn was starting his first day of his second week of work. And he was very excited, and he was pretty much running out the door. I was going to say to him, be careful, but he ran out so fast.

00:06:34:08 – 00:06:39:21
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Draidyn’s boss was Warren Peters, the village foreman. It’s a role he’s held for almost three decades.

00:06:39:24 – 00:07:11:10
Warren Peters: Public works. Basically for our small town, it’s basically everything to do with taking care of the town. Any maintenance work, grading roads, plowing snow. There’s the water and sewer work… just take care of everything like that. I mean, we get help in summer, like student help for mowing grass and things like that. Just anything that you could think of that needs to be done in a little town, that’s my responsibility.

00:07:11:12 – 00:07:18:06
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: On this day, Warren and Draidyn spent a few minutes in the morning discussing the teen’s responsibility for his shift before Warren headed out of town.

00:07:18:08 – 00:07:48:00
Warren Peters: I needed to do some other work out at– like, we pump water from the North Saskatchewan River up to town here, which is about 12 km away. And that was what I was busy at that day, so I knew I wasn’t going to be back for lunch and just kind of we were making sure he was, knew what it was he had to do that day. So then once we went over all that, he went off with the mower, and I went off doing my work.

00:07:48:03 – 00:07:52:17
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Not long after, Draidyn’s friend Karleigh Dennis popped by to say hello.

00:07:52:19 – 00:08:00:08
Karleigh Dennis: So I’m 14. I go to Waldheim School. I’ve been friends with Draidyn basically since kindergarten.

00:08:00:10 – 00:08:10:02
Co-host Deborah Tetley: She was in Grade 9 at the time and had lived in Laird her whole life. Her dad is the fire chief. She’s a bubbly, friendly, outgoing girl who thinks she might follow in her father’s footsteps one day.

00:08:10:09 – 00:08:20:16
Karleigh Dennis: Obviously, after Draidyn’s incident, I kind of took interest in, like, thinking, like, maybe I should be a first responder or join the fire department like my dad did.

00:08:20:18 – 00:08:27:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: I can see why, after meeting your dad and a lot of the other people who responded to this incident. What do you remember about that day?

00:08:27:05 – 00:09:04:01
Karleigh Dennis: So, in the morning, I was doing some yard work at the school. I was specifically out by the swingset, and sometime around 10, 10:15, I saw him mowing the grass at the baseball diamond. And after I was done, I rode my quad over kind of where the baseball diamond is. And me and him talked. We just caught up on stuff, how his summer was going, what’s going on. And then he mentioned how he was off work at 2. So he asked if we wanted to hang out, and I said, yeah.

00:09:04:04 – 00:09:09:10
Co-host Deborah Tetley: The teens had been friends for many years, as is the case with many of the kids in the small town.

00:09:09:13 – 00:09:18:10
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: So, Karleigh, your name came up a few times when we were looking into this story — “Karleigh was going to meet Draidyn that day,” — that kind of thing. Just tell us more about your friendship with Draidyn.

00:09:18:12 – 00:10:01:14
Karleigh Dennis: So me and him in school, he’s a grade higher than me, so we wouldn’t hang out all the time. But we would talk, like, a lot in school, because in Laird, which is where we had our K to 8, we would talk like a lot. We were basically in the same classroom, just different grades. So but he obviously had his friends. So when we were younger we would still talk, but not that much. But when my parents started traveling and I’d stay over at his house, we hung out and talked a lot, and we would even hang out over the summer. We’d take lawn tractors and go riding around town. So that was fun.

00:10:01:16 – 00:10:30:28
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: But today, Draidyn would be riding a different lawn tractor — the commercial-grade mower provided to him by his employer to cut grass around town. It’s one the village had been using for many years, a zero-turn hydrostatic unit with a pair of levers to independently control left- and right-side forward and backward movement. It would effectively spin on a dime if one lever was pushed forward and the other pulled back. At the front of this particular one was mounted a 72-inch mower deck. As Warren explains, it was designed and built to be a rugged machine.

00:10:31:00 – 00:10:58:02
Warren Peters: It’s a fairly high powered– It’s a commercial mower. So, yeah, it’s not something you’d normally have in your own yard unless you’re, you know, on a large acreage or a farm or something like that. So they use them for golf courses and things like that too. So I know, yeah, small brush even and stuff like that. They’d cut stuff like that. So, yeah. I mean, mainly it’s meant for grass, but I mean it’s, it’s a pretty heavy duty machine. Yeah, yeah.

00:10:58:05 – 00:11:22:29
Co-host Deborah Tetley: By early afternoon, Draidyn, who didn’t stop for a lunch break on this day, paused to refuel the mower, then set out to complete the final bit of his shift. His plan was to cut the grass behind the town arena adjacent to the baseball diamond before heading home to meet Karleigh. Eventually, Warren returned to the village office around the time Karleigh dropped by Draidyn’s house to meet up as planned, but there was no answer when she knocked on his door.

00:11:23:02 – 00:11:26:25
Karleigh Dennis: So the arena is just over there. Draidyn’s house is just currently over there…

00:11:27:15 – 00:11:34:00
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Karleigh was showing us the village streets that she recalled walking down a year earlier while looking for Draidyn.

00:11:34:03 – 00:11:56:24
Karleigh Dennis: I thought he would, like, be showering, changing or something. So I waited a bit and I kind of like looked around and listened to see if I could hear a lawnmower. And even while I was walking home by like my house, I was trying to see if I could hear. But, before, I walked down Main Street because there’s like shortcuts where the baseball diamond is that leads behind the arena.

00:11:56:27 – 00:12:13:28
Karleigh Dennis: And I was thinking, if I should take like, a shortcut or if I should go down Main Street. And I thought to myself, but I like, I went down Main Street because I thought it, just, I’d run into him on like the road or something that was looking around like everywhere. But I didn’t see him.

00:12:13:28 – 00:12:18:00
Co-host Deborah Tetley: So she headed to the village office and ran into Warren.

00:12:18:03 – 00:12:30:23
Warren Peters: When I got back to the shop and I noticed that he hadn’t been back with the mower, so I think, oh, maybe he got carried away or just lost track of time. So I didn’t think too much of it right away.

00:12:30:26 – 00:12:45:17
Karleigh Dennis: And then as I passed the village office, which is where Warren works, I was thinking, like, if I should go knock on the door, because that was when I saw Draidyn’s bike, and then Warren walked out of the door, and that was when I just walked up and said, hey, like, Have you seen Draidyn? Do you know where he is?

00:12:45:17 – 00:12:54:01
Warren Peters: And I oh, no, I, you know, he should be mowing grass around where the kind of ballpark/arena area, is where this happened.

00:12:54:09 – 00:13:04:07
Karleigh Dennis: And then he said he’d go look for him. And then I said, okay, I’ll just I’ll go home. And then, on my way back, I just kept trying to listen for a lawnmower, but I couldn’t, so I just went home.

00:13:04:09 – 00:13:17:26
Warren Peters: So I went off to that area to see where he was. And I, you know, just looking around. I didn’t see anything right away. You can usually hear that mower going, and I couldn’t hear anything either.

00:13:17:28 – 00:13:27:23
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Warren was not prepared for what he saw next. He didn’t spot Draidyn right away, but he did see that is hat was lying on the field, along with some Co-host Deborah Tetleyris. But that wasn’t all.

00:13:27:27 – 00:13:43:21
Warren Peters: So I just went to the mower to check it out, and that’s when I found him there. So that was, yeah, the last thing I was expecting for sure. Yeah. That picture. It’ll stick with me for a long time, you know.

00:13:43:23 – 00:14:02:25
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: There was Draidyn, on his back, trapped… almost completely under the lawnmower deck. Only his head and right arm were visible out the left side of the machine. One of Draidyn’s shoes was in the grass several feet away. The mower wasn’t running. Draidyn was conscious and alert, but visibly fading in and out.

00:14:02:28 – 00:14:19:00
Warren Peters: That was just… it was, just so unreal. It was almost like a, you know, someone just set up a scene that didn’t really make sense to me right away. It didn’t click in my head that this is, you know, the first thing I actually thought was, What are you doing fooling around, you know?

00:14:19:03 – 00:14:21:29
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Yeah. Like, I mean, am I getting punked right now? Like, is this a scene? Yeah.

00:14:21:29 – 00:15:05:12
Warren Peters: But I mean, it didn’t take long to know that, Okay, we got to be calling 911 here, and then just, yeah, in that whole time, just kind of staying with him there. His one arm was out and he, he was holding up his arm and I would hold his hand there and I tried to talk to him and keep him alert a bit. And he seemed to be fairly alert at the time, like he could tell me, like he didn’t want me to move the mower because he thought, you know, it might cause some more damage. He thought maybe he had a punctured lung or something. So he was, you know, that aware and I, we still don’t really know how long he was there. Could have been an hour, you know, or could have been half an hour. It’s really hard to say.

00:15:05:12 – 00:15:15:15
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: What was clear to him is that Draidyn needed help fast. In our first conversation with Warren on the phone, he recalled making that initial plea for an emergency response.

00:15:15:17 – 00:16:36:07
Warren Peters: I mean, right away is that I was like, okay, I got to call 911 here. Just saying that we had this guy here that needed help right away, and he was caught under a mower. And I maybe didn’t even explain that great. But, you know, I mean, just trying to get the message across that we needed an ambulance there quick. So, yeah, just going through that, it’s kind of a blur now what I remember was. So we just, I mean, I was there on the phone and then I was down beside him there and just kinda was holding on his hand, and I was just kind of saying, Hang in there, bud, hang in there, you know, just, we’re getting you help here right away. And at the same time, he was, you know, we were talking a little bit that way. And he would say something like, you know, tell my mom and my brother that I love them and stuff like that. And to me it was like, oh, he’s going to he’s going to be gone here. Like, I didn’t think he was even going to make it. But he kept, you know, I kept trying to keep him alert because it did seem like he’d want to kind of fade out a little bit here and there and, yeah, I just. I didn’t know what to do. I just felt so glad, you know, when the paramedics started showing up.

00:16:36:09 – 00:16:46:16
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: While emergency responders from Laird, Rosthern and nearby Waldheim began rushing toward the scene, an off-duty STARS crew member who lived in a neighbouring town was alerted to the situation.

00:16:46:19 – 00:16:54:15
Daniel Kobylak: My name is Daniel Kobylak, I’m the clinical operations manager for STARS’ Saskatoon based, but more importantly, I’m a flight paramedic here in Saskatoon.

00:16:54:18 – 00:17:12:11
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Those were titles he held when we interviewed him for this story. Daniel has since moved on from STARS, but at the time, in addition to his regular work here, he was also a volunteer first responder in his home community, which happened to be near Laird, where Draidyn was trapped, so he knew most of the emergency responders in that area.

00:17:12:14 – 00:17:32:14
Daniel Kobylak: I know I can hear from the team from time to time. I’m integrated with our local department there and have a good working relationship with them. So, they know that if the call is a high acuity, they can always reach out for support if I’m not physically on the call with them, and they do from time to time.

00:17:32:17 – 00:17:43:24
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And this was one of those times. When he got the call, Daniel and his wife just so happened to be on their way to volunteer at Field of STARS, a major fundraising event for us through the Ag in Motion Farming Expo.

00:17:43:27 – 00:18:21:25
Daniel Kobylak: I was actually, just left home to head to Field of STARS, and I had a first responder call from our local fire department that they were responding to Draidyn’s call. I looked at the call, and the details were very vague at the time of call, but shortly after I received a call, a phone call, from one of our fire department members, who asked if I knew how long until a helicopter would arrive. And I could tell from his voice that it wasn’t a good scene at all. And I asked if he needed help. And he said, We could use all the help we can get. So I turned the car around…

00:18:21:29 – 00:18:31:26
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And headed back toward the scene to lend a hand. He also messaged his on-duty colleagues at the Saskatoon base, moments before they began receiving information from the STARS Emergency Link Centre.

00:18:31:28 – 00:18:49:15
Daniel Kobylak: Just by the nature of the call, it sounds like something that STARS might get involved with but I wasn’t too sure, so I thought I’d shoot them a text and just say, hey guys, just so you know, there’s a call coming in out this way. I don’t know if you’ve received an alert or not, but I just wanted to give them a heads up.

00:18:49:18 – 00:18:54:23
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And now, a quick word from our Season 2 sponsor.

00:18:54:26 – 00:19:31:09
ARC Resources sponsorship spot: As Canada’s third largest natural gas producer and the largest producer of condensate, ARC Resources is proud to play an important role in the responsible development of Canada’s energy resources. In delivering those resources, safety is the number one priority, always, and it’s that core value that makes ARC’s partnership with STARS a natural fit. It’s our shared goal to ensure that everyone arrives home safely at the end of the day. Learn more about how ARC is leading the way for safe and responsible energy development at arcresources.com.

00:19:31:12 – 00:19:41:24
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Welcome back. Flight paramedic Glen Pilon and flight nurse Bailey Sinclair were the STARS air medical crew who were on shift. Bailey still remembers how those early moments played out.

00:19:41:26 – 00:20:41:22
STARS flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: I had just finished my training about three weeks prior. So, to work for STARS, you have to do some pretty intensive training. It’s about a 20-week program involving a lot of in-person training as well as online training, lots of stimulation and a lot of ride along shifts. So we are provided this very excellent training, and then all of a sudden you’re placed into the world on your own. So, one of my first shifts by myself, I’m working with Glen. That morning, we had done a call, the call had gone really well. Everything was great. It was mid-afternoon and we’re sitting at the base when our manager sent us a text just saying, Hey, I’m just going to give you a heads up, I think you’re going to get a call here pretty soon. He had received a notification that there was a 16-year-old who had been run over by a lawnmower. Glen and I had spoke about it. We obviously knew as soon as we got the information that we were going to go on this call, and we wanted to help this kid out.

00:20:41:25 – 00:21:02:13
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Not long after Warren found Draidyn, STARS was dispatched to the village of Laird for only the second time since a base was established in Saskatoon in 2012. The first mission to the village was in 2016, and while there had been other missions in nearby communities, this was only the second time we landed here.

00:21:02:16 – 00:21:08:16
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST: STAR 11, Link Centre, you’re on pre alert for a scene call 13 nautical miles northwest of Rosthern in Laird.

00:21:08:18 – 00:21:11:12
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Pilot Alex Parra: Link Centre, STAR 11, copies. Standby weather.

00:21:11:14 – 00:21:14:19
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST: Standing by for weather.

00:21:14:22 – 00:21:15:26
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: STAR 11, medical.

00:21:15:29 – 00:21:38:09
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST: Hey, guys. It’s Lindsay in the Link Centre. Just regarding this call in Laird, it’s a quick flight for you guys. You’re about a 16-minute flight. We have a 16-year-old male who was trapped under a riding lawnmower. His whole body is trapped. Possible lung puncture. Behind the arena in the middle of the field there. ALS is 25 minutes.

00:21:38:11 – 00:21:41:03
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: So, we will go as long as we’re good for weather.

00:21:41:03 – 00:21:45:14
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST: Okay. Okay, just sending dispatch tones. Thanks, guys.

00:21:45:16 – 00:21:49:28
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Flight nurse Bailey Sinclair: Thanks.

00:21:50:00 – 00:21:53:16
STARS EMERGENCY LINK CENTRE – EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST: STAR 11, Link Centre. You’ve been dispatched to the scene call in the town of Laird.

00:21:53:18 – 00:21:58:10
STARS Emergency Link Centre – Pilot Alex Parra: Copy, Link Centre. Dispatched to scene call and standing by for coordinates.

00:21:58:13 – 00:22:07:15
Co-host Deborah Tetley: It wouldn’t be long before STARS arrived. And in that time, Draidyn lay trapped under the mower in the searing heat. Warren stayed by his side.

00:22:07:18 – 00:23:01:12
Warren Peters: So, I just kind of held my hat over there to shade him a bit and, yeah, and that, and trying to talk with the 911 there at the same time. And until people started showing up. Because, for the 911 call, they must have– our fire department and first responders must have got the call then. And so they started showing up and just the whole timing of all that, and when people started showing up, that’s just kind of almost a bit of a blur now. So. But yeah, it seemed like quite a while at first and, you know, and just that whole thing like, I almost was, thought he was, you know, going to pass away right there for, you know, some moments. That was just, didn’t… it’s hard to process it at the time, like just, yeah.

00:23:01:14 – 00:23:17:06
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Draidyn’s mom, Christine, soon received a call from a fellow first responder. Christine is also a volunteer firefighter, and these are roles she’d held for many years. On this day, she was working at her paying job at a nursing home. She’d raced to a lot of emergencies over the years, but this one would be different.

00:23:17:08 – 00:24:30:07
Christine Wollmann: I went to work and my oldest, he had a job in the city, so he was working in the city. He leaves super early. I think he got to work at like 5:30 in the morning. And then I went to work and I was in this one person’s room cleaning, and my first responder called me and told me that we were going to get a bad call with a kid with a mower behind the Laird arena. And I said, okay. And then I got the page right away. So then I, hung up and I called Draidyn’s boss and asked him if it was my kid, and he said yes, and I just said, I’m on my way. And I didn’t ask for any details. It just said on my page that a kid was caught in a lawnmower. That’s all it said. So I knew something. I didn’t know exactly what. So I put my four-way flashers on, and I started to go, and I called my…

00:24:30:09 – 00:24:51:17
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: As Christine drove, first responders arrived at Draidyn side and quickly discovered this teenager needed urgent critical care and transport to the nearest trauma centre. Minutes later, and as Daniel had predicted, the STARS Emergency Link Centre, our communications and dispatch hub that you’ve heard actual recordings from throughout this podcast, received a request from Saskatchewan EMS to attend the scene.

00:24:51:20 – 00:25:18:06
Co-host Deborah Tetley: While the crew in Saskatoon prepared for the mission, a crowd was gathering around Draidyn. Some were onlookers from the town, while others were helpers set to work. Among the first emergency workers on scene was Gil Maraboto, a paramedic from nearby Rosthern. The moment he received the call, he and another paramedic jumped in a ground ambulance and raced to the scene. He knew STARS was on the way, so he was going to do what he could to help until then.

00:25:18:09 – 00:25:40:05
Gil Maraboto: The call came in saying someone was trapped under a lawnmower. That was like, I don’t know how that can happen, but I jumped in the ambulance, and actually, I was driving. I was faster than anybody there. So we we drove over and, yeah, we found that guy under the lawnmower but I don’t know how he ended up there.

00:25:40:08 – 00:25:56:03
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Kayla Burrell was also among the first to arrive. She and her husband, Kevin, were both volunteer first responders for Waldheim Fire and Rescue for about seven years. Kayla was in her garden when she received word that she was needed. What she heard left her terrified.

00:25:56:05 – 00:26:28:20
Kayla Burrell: My partner Phil and I went first to the hall and rolled out with our ambulance. And we zipped over to Laird. It was a seven- or eight-minute drive. And I remember I was petrified because you always know that you could get this kind of call, but you don’t know it until it happens. I said to him on the way over there – and it’s not like me, I’m usually pretty calm – but I just said, Phil, I’m scared. Like, are we actually going to find what we think we’re gonna find?

00:26:28:23 – 00:26:41:20
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Meanwhile, Karleigh Dennis, who you’ll recall was the first to flag that Draidyn was missing, still had no idea what had happened. She’d gone home after talking to Warren about Draidyn’s absence. Soon, though, she got a call from her dad, the village’s fire chief.

00:26:41:22 – 00:27:56:14
Karleigh Dennis: So I walked home. I got into my house, and my dad called me and asked m where I was, and I said I was at home. And he mentioned how there has been an incident in town and that I have to stay home. I was talking with my brother because my brother was home at the time, and he had to leave for work shortly after. So I said the incident was in town, so if you see anything, just let me know. And he was, he was on the access road just outside of town, he called me and said, I seen it, I didn’t see who it was, but all I know is that it was a kid on a mower. And I just instantly knew it was Draidyn because he’s the only one on a lawnmower in town. After that, I ran down the back alley to see if I can spot the STARS helicopter, an ambulance, police or anything. And as I got to where the bar is, I seen all the police cars roll up. I see his grandpa. I see just everything piling up into behind the arena. I started crying, so I walk back and I just, all I could do was wait and just pray that he’d be okay.

00:27:56:16 – 00:28:03:03
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: When Draidyn’s mom, Christine, arrived, having driven from her job in Rosthern, the grassy area behind the arena was bustling.

00:28:03:06 – 00:29:02:12
Christine Wollmann: And then when I got there, I saw that Waldheim’s trucks were there and the ambulance. So I thought, okay, good, there’s somebody here helping. And then I parked outside. My mom – and my mom was crying, and I told my mom, I’ll be right back, I love you, it’ll be okay. And I ran past the fire truck. And then that’s when I saw Draidyn’s body. All I saw was just his head. His whole body was underneath that mower deck. It was like, I was not expecting to see that, and I started, I broke down. I started to cry, and I thought to myself that I am burying my kid. He’s in a million pieces, knowing that there’s three blades underneath that mower deck.

00:29:02:14 – 00:29:06:01
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Next time on Mission Ready…

00:29:06:03 – 00:29:23:24
Gil Maraboto: So I put my hand underneath and, like, I feel like that’s something, like, hard. Like all the blades, like. Oh, yeah, the blade is inside his chest. And I feel his arm, like, his left arm was like, into pieces, like, Okay, that’s not good.

00:29:23:26 – 00:29:34:04
Dr. Segun Oyedokun: So the challenge now is, how do you remove the lawnmower from the patient without removing the foreign body that is stuck in the body?

00:29:34:06 – 00:29:39:10
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission ready, presented by ARC Resources, is produced in-house by me, Co-host Deborah Tetleyorah Tetley.

00:29:39:14 – 00:29:45:04
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: And me, Co-host Lyle Aspinall Aspinall. Watch video clips from this season at STARS.ca/missionready.

00:29:45:06 – 00:30:02:01
Co-host Deborah Tetley: Mission Ready contains original theme music by Kaiya Gamble, whose dad was a long time STARS pilot and whose mom was once a transport physician. Check her out at kaiyagamble.com. Please rate and review Mission Ready wherever you found it, and be sure to tell your friends about it. Also, check out Season 1.

00:30:02:04 – 00:30:08:14
Co-host Lyle Aspinall: Want to be a STARS ally? Get involved and support our mission by visiting STARS.ca. Until next time, thanks for listening.