by Jeff Brooks
Staff Writer
Just about the time Mark Brunell hit Kyle Brady with a touchdown pass at the end of the first half of the Philadelphia Eagles game, Capt. Richard Darby’s radio crackled with an alert: a man in Section 232 of Alltel Stadium was suffering chest pains.
Someone using a cell phone reported the seizure. The 911 call was relayed to Darby, who runs the North Medical Room at Alltel Stadium during Jacksonville Jaguars games. He promptly dispatched a two-man response team to help the man.
Moments later, Paramedic Dave Adler returned, without a patient in tow.
“It was chest pains/drunk,” Adler reports to Darby. “We checked him out and everything was OK.”
Such is life in the Jacksonville Emergency Medical Auxiliary (JEMA).
For the most part, game days are pretty quiet in the small room tucked away in the north end zone, which members of JEMA share with the Fan Accommodation Booth. Darby says on a slow day, they’ll handle about three or four calls.
“It varies by weather conditions,” said Darby, who works for the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department and volunteers to work game days. He’s also a City Council candidate in District 14. “Most of the people who come in here don’t come prepared for the game. They wear the wrong shoes, are looking for sunblock or need feminine hygiene products. If someone would open a booth selling Advil, sunscreen and Pepto Bismol, they’d make a mint.”
While this day was proving to be rather uneventful, Darby says that wasn’t the case a few weeks ago for the New York Jets game, when temperatures soared well above 90 degrees. On that Sunday, JEMA treated 174 people for heat-related problems.
“During the Jets game we set up a triage area with cooling fans,” said Darby. “We even brought in a JTA bus with the air conditioning running and loaded people on that to help them cool down.”
Almost on cue, a woman and her husband enter the room. She’s sweating and flushed and tells Darby she felt like she was going to pass out. Immediately, Darby and Cherech, who has been working at the stadium since 1995 and says the experience “helps keep his skills sharp,” give the woman a wet towel for her head and a cup of water. Cherech checks her blood pressure and pulse while Darby asks a few routine questions. The women tells the staff she had been sitting in the stands for about an hour before the game started and it’s now midway through the first quarter. After several minutes, Cherech checks her blood pressure again. A few minutes later, she returns to her seat to watch the rest of the game.
“You see it all,” said Darby, relating tales of insect bites, people who can’t see because sunblock dripped into their eyes, a man injured in a fight with a police horse and cardiac arrest. There is one thing he hasn’t had to do yet: help birth a baby.
As Darby runs through the litany of complaints, a young woman enters the room, grousing about one of the most common problems JEMA faces — women wearing inappropriate footwear.
“I wore the wrong shoes and they’re killing me,” said the woman, adding she should have known better because she teaches golf for a living. After some good-natured barbs, the woman is given four bandages for her bloody feet. “I’ll never wear these shoes again,” she declares as she leaves the room.
Almost before the door closes, a woman from Folkston, Ga. enters with the same problem: “I was wearing comfortable shoes, but my husband made me take them off and throw them in the garbage,” she said. She, too, left with bandaged feet.
Darby, who has been working game days since the Jaguars inaugural season, said it doesn’t hurt to have a sense of humor while working at the stadium, a sentiment echoed by those in the room, and something that is evident between visits from ailing fans.
During the down time, the JEMA team talks football — “you know how it is, get in the red zone and get a field goal” — even though they can’t see the game because there’s no television in the room. (They do know when the Jaguars score because they can hear the fireworks going off in the south end zone after every touchdown or field goal).
Occasionally, the ribbing and joviality takes a more ominous tone, as in the case of Jacksonville Sheriff’s Officer Todd Lemmon, who credits the JEMA team with saving his life.
Lemmon, who had visited his doctor because of chest pains, was working his post in the north end zone when he began experiencing “a sky-high heart beat.”
“I came in, and they sent me to the hospital,” said Lemmon. “It was a small heart attack.”
The day begins early for the JEMA team.
They arrive about three or four hours before the game and must be in position in the stands before the gates open 90 minutes before kickoff. They have a pregame meeting in the main medical room, which is located beneath the stadium, to discuss a game plan for the day and to make sure all the equipment is working properly. The team, which numbers about 30, has the ability to handle even the most advanced medical problems. There’s always a rescue unit on site in case someone requires transportation to the hospital. There are two, two-man response teams inside the stadium and two bike teams responding to emergencies outside the stadium. In addition to the medical room in the north end zone, there’s one in the east and west “nose bleed” sections.
The teams remain on duty for almost two hours after the game. Darby likens the experience to working in a small city.
As the day progresses, a steady stream of those in need continue through the door: a woman looking for ear plugs, a man needing a bandage, a women with a scratch on her arm, a young girl who suffered a scrape and an Eagles fan who wanted the stadium announcer to wish her husband a happy birthday because they had been traveling all weekend and she forgot about it.
For Darby, it’s all in a day’s work.
“People are bound and determined to go to a football game regardless of their health,” he said