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Hexters Pub in Calgary’s Bowness neighbourhood was packed on New Year’s Eve. The house band, Gary Martin and the Heavenly Blues, performed to the sold-out crowd.
After the first set, frontman Gary Martin noticed something wasn’t right with his saxophone player.
Seventy-two-year-old Marvin Yakoweshen was feeling disoriented and dizzy and immediately took a seat. A patron in the crowd, who happens to be a nurse of 42 years, noticed Yakoweshen was in trouble.
Rhonda Mikulak jumped into action to care for him until emergency crews arrived.
“He was in trouble,” she said. “I knew right away he was.
“I held his face in my hands and I just said, ‘Stay with me,'” Mikulak recalled. “I could tell his extremities were turning blue and I was losing him, that was how it was left with me.
“I spent two days worrying about it. It bothered me to no end. There’s a connection between a nurse and a patient, and he was my patient.”
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Mikulak said she could hardly wait to see Yakoweshen again. So the two, once strangers, reunited at the last place where she had seen him alive.
“I remember her trying to keep me awake and I really appreciate that,” Yakoweshen said. “That was very nice of her. She didn’t have to do that.”
“I’m grateful he’s OK,” Mikulak said.
Yakoweshen said he suspects he suffered a minor stroke and his bandmates said they are all just relieved he has recovered and that the nurse was there that night.
“She was our angel of mercy that day,” Martin said.
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