When a Denver woman felt unwell, she called to cancel a doctor’s appointment, but the call saved her life.
For many people, receiving a call from the doctor’s office may feel like an afterthought. Kim Headley and Tonya Hopper heard it all, but in December a phone call stuck in their minds that they won’t forget.
“I woke up around 4 a.m. and felt my chest pulsing and feeling really tired,” Launis Freeney-Brown said. “When I woke up, I said I have to go down and cancel that appointment. So around six o’clock, I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other.”
The call connected her to Headley in Intermountain Health’s contact care department.
“I got a call and she was talking and she was really short of breath. Like she had to say a word or two and then she had to breathe again and I finally asked, ‘Are you short of breath?’ and she said, ‘Well, you know, I kind of am,'” Headley said. “That’s when she told me she was experiencing the worst chest pain of her life, and someone else had told me that before, and I was like, ‘Oh no, she needs to talk to a registered nurse.'”
“She said, ‘Okay, wait a minute, I’ll be right back with you,'” Freeney-Brown said.
Headley reached out to Hopper, the nurse on duty.
“She never succeeded with me,” Hopper said.
Freeney Brown is gone.
Hopper rushed to call her emergency contact, but no one answered. So, just in case, she called 911 to send them to Freenie Brown’s home.
“There was a knock on my front door and I said, ‘Who’s at my front door?’ I looked up and it was paramedics and the fire department,” Freeney-Brown said.
Minutes after the call was hung up, rescuers arrived in time.
“I’m really grateful to her because she saved my life,” Freeney-Brown said. “At that moment, I didn’t know I was having a heart attack.”
Freeney-Brown didn’t know she needed help.
“I said, ‘Something’s wrong.’ But I’m not going to go to the doctor. I’m not going to do anything but stay home or I might die here,” Freeney-Brown said.
Three months later, as her condition improved, Freeney-Brown finally had the opportunity to meet Headley and Hopper. In the chapel of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Denver, she came to hug and say “thank you” to the women who saved her life.
“I’m so grateful, so grateful to both of you. I owe you my life,” Freeney-Brown said.
A brief phone call brought the three together, creating a lifelong bond.
“I’m here and I’m standing! I’m standing this high because of all of you. I love you all, okay?” Freeney Brown said.
Freeney-Brown said she was extremely grateful to Headley and Hopper for recognizing the signs and symptoms of her heart attack without her realizing it. Now, she’s on the road to recovery, still taking medication and trying to regain her strength, but she’s back to running while taking extra care to listen to her body.
