Williams moved to Kentville only about a year ago, and on October 18, he decided to take a tour alone in his vehicle.
“I had spent some time in Keji taking photographs of the autumn foliage and came back through Liverpool,” he says.
“I decided that I would drive back a more scenic route, and of course I’m new to the area so I was just kind of exploring.”
As he drove down the Eastern Shore Road in Brooklyn, however, he was overtaken by a “stabbing pain in my chest which just took my breath away,” he says. That stabbing pain turned out be an aortic aneurysm, which has an extremely low survival rate.
All he could do was pull into the nearest driveway for help.
That’s when Ryan appeared.
Williams moved to Kentville only about a year ago, and on October 18, he decided to take a tour alone in his vehicle.
“I had spent some time in Keji taking photographs of the autumn foliage and came back through Liverpool,” he says.
“I decided that I would drive back a more scenic route, and of course I’m new to the area so I was just kind of exploring.”
As he drove down the Eastern Shore Road in Brooklyn, however, he was overtaken by a “stabbing pain in my chest which just took my breath away,” he says. That stabbing pain turned out be an aortic aneurysm, which has an extremely low survival rate.
All he could do was pull into the nearest driveway for help.
That’s when Ryan appeared.
“Ryan opened the door and said ‘are your all right sir, is there anything I can do?’” says Williams.
“I was in pain I had my down on the top of the car trying to, you know, get it together and I said “I think I’m having a heart attack can you get me to the nearest hospital.?’ “
That’s when Ryan took over. He grabbed William’s keys, jumped in his car, and started speeding to Queens General Hospital.
“Frankly he was a young man who was determined to get me to hospital. He said ‘don’t worry I’ve been driving racing cars’, and he drove fast, even scooting through the intersection where the Tim Horton’s is, and he knew where that hospital was. I’m not sure I would have found that hospital.”
Not that Williams could have found it even if he tried.
“I knew from my experience that waiting for an ambulance wasn’t a good idea. We got to that hospital in under ten minutes.”
The last thing Williams remembers is Ryan handing the nurse his keys. He woke up four days later in the QE11 in Halifax, where doctor’s there had done open heart surgery to repair the aneurysm.
“Part of why I am determined to find Ryan is that the survival rate is so poor for that condition. 50 per cent die before they make it to the hospital, 30 per cent die on the operating table, so I owe this man my life,” says Williams, welling up with emotion.
“I want to be able to thank him. I owe him. And it’s a debt I’ll never repay. I want him to know that I’m alive and that he’s the reason. “
