Julie, Flight Nurse

I had some excitement on my flight back from Boston this morning. As I'm sitting calmly in my seat about midway through the flight, I see a flight attendant get what looked like an AED out of the overhead bin in the front of the plane and head to the rear of the plane. I didn't hear any commotion or call for help, so eventually I figured it must not have been an AED. About 5 minutes later, they did overhead a call for nurses and doctors, so I jumped up and headed to the back of the plane where there was a man leaning over the back of one of the seats. A flight attendant told me he was really nauseous and sweaty. I asked if he was diabetic, and he said yes. I promptly asked the flight attendant for some orange juice, and tried to figure out where this man's baggage was so we could get his glucometer. This was not an easy process, so I called out to the other passengers to see if anyone had one. No response. By this time, a doctor had come to help. Eventually, the man was able to tell us where his bag was, so we got out his glucometer and other meds. My hands were shaking badly as I desperately got his accucheck. It turns out that his blood sugar was actually really high, so he felt much better after giving himself some insulin. Throughout this ordeal, the flight attendant was asking the doctor and me to tell her if we needed to land the plane due to medical emergency. The guy didn't have any chest pain or other symptoms of a heart attack, so he seemed to be in the clear. When we landed in Chicago, there was an ambulance waiting for us and EMTs got the guy off first. As I deplaned, I heard them trying to convince him to go to the hospital to get ruled out for an MI, but who knows what happened after that.