LUCKY TO BEE ALIVE
One local gardener is saved at the hands of the Nantucket Cottage Hospital.
The last time Laura Davison saw Brandon Giberson, they were both studying at the University of Maine. Back then, Davison was impressed that Giberson was working as an EMT his freshman year, beginning his journey to becoming a doctor. But after Davison graduated and moved to Nantucket where she became a professional gardener, she did not see him again until this September—some two decades later— when she literally stumbled into Nantucket Cottage Hospital on the brink of death.
An hour earlier, Davison had been tending to one of her many clients’ properties on Nantucket. She was gathering bouquets of anemones from a meadow in Quidnet that she had planted as a pollinator garden, designed specifically to attract and support bees and other pollinators. Hundreds of bumblebees buzzed around the meadow. As she reached down to cut another anemone to add to her bouquet, one of the bees stung her on the pinkie.
Like an electrician getting zapped, bee stings come with the territory when you’re a gardener, especially one as passionate about supporting pollinators as Davison. Just that week, she had already been stung five times. “People who know me know that I love bees,” she says. “A few years ago, a client bought me a diamond necklace of a bee as a gift. My camera roll is filled with photos and videos of bees pollinating. I never thought that something I love so much could turn out to be the thing that almost killed me.”
Although her hand began to swell and her arm felt numb after the sting, Davison closed the gate to her clients’ property, jumped into her truck and headed to her next client’s place in Sconset. Five minutes later, her body felt as if it were being bitten by a swarm of mosquitos. Hives began breaking out on her skin and her head felt scalding hot. Growing alarmed, she called up one of her co-workers. “You should go to the emergency room,” the co-worker said. Davison glanced in her rearview mirror and saw that one of her eyes had turned bloodshot. Still, she figured the symptoms could be treated with medicine, so she texted her next client and asked if she could borrow some Benadryl.
By the time Davison arrived in Sconset, the left side of her body had gone completely numb, and her tongue had become so swollen that she couldn’t keep it in her mouth. She felt her throat closing. Her alarm now turned to fear. Davison hastily took the Benadryl with some water, but struggled to swallow the tablets because of how constricted her throat was. With her symptoms intensifying rapidly, she couldn’t wait for an ambulance. She tumbled back to her truck to drive to the emergency room. On the way, she called her co-worker and her husband, who alerted the Nantucket Cottage Hospital that she was en route.
Giberson was sitting by the nurses’ station when Davison’s husband called. When he heard her name, Giberson was instantly taken aback. Was this the same Laura Davison from college? He was new to Nantucket Cottage Hospital. About a year earlier, he had begun splitting his time as a traveling doctor, specifically an emergency physician, between the island and another hospital in Maine. Giberson put the possible coincidence out of his mind as he began preparing for Davison’s arrival.
Meanwhile behind the wheel of her truck on Milestone Road, Davison was praying—intensely. “I could actually feel my body shutting down and I thought to myself, this is how I am going to die,” she recalls. “I considered pulling over because driving at this point was not safe as the left side of my body was completely numb.” By the time she arrived at the emergency room, she could barely breathe. She collapsed into the arms of the nurses who were waiting for her and was whisked back to the resuscitation room that had already been prepared for her. On the way, she locked eyes with a surprisingly familiar face. “Laura,” Giberson said calmly. “It’s Brandon. You’re going to be OK. We’ll take good care of you.”
“I do believe God heard my prayers,” Davison says. “The crazy thing was that the week prior I was actually talking to a client about [Brandon]. I was saying how he worked at the college as a paramedic and he and his twin brother were going to school to become doctors. I hadn’t really even thought about him since college, but for some reason that day he crossed my mind and I remember saying out loud: ‘He must be the best doctor.’”
Giberson and his team of nurses launched right into action. The situation was dire.
“Laura was really in quite a predicament; the anaphylaxis [which is a multisystem allergic reaction] that she had was amongst the most severe I’ve ever seen,” says Giberson, whose past experience includes training at a large level-one trauma center in Atlanta, Georgia. “Laura was as sick of an anaphylactic patient as you could get in that she was having such a profound systemic response that she was very close to losing the ability to breathe.” The doctor adds, “Anaphylaxis is one of a number of things in emergency medicine that seconds actually really do matter.”
Within thirty seconds of her hitting the resuscitation bed, one of the nurses had already administered an IV to her arm. Before Giberson had a chance to call out the meds that were needed, one of the other nurses had already drawn them up. Giberson and his team ultimately administered three EpiPens along with steroids and Benadryl by way of her IV. The team worked with perfect precision. The ER staff at Nantucket Cottage Hospital is particularly capable of treating anaphylaxis as they see a disproportionate number of cases due to the fact that vacationing populations are spending more time outside where bee stings can occur or are eating shellfish for the first time. It’s one of the many extreme medical situations that the Cottage Hospital is uniquely equipped to treat.
“Nantucket Cottage Hospital is a really special place,” Giberson attests. “There’s almost a perceived status quo within both the general public and within emergency medicine that when you are in a resource-limited environment [such as Nantucket] you may have to sacrifice the level of care you can provide, but Nantucket Cottage Hospital defies that perceived status quo. They demand equivalent or better care that you would expect to receive at a large facility on the mainland when it comes to emergency medicine.”
On that day, Davison was the beneficiary of this world-class facility. “After receiving treatment at the hospital and having my life saved by Dr. Giberson, I realized how important funding for the hospital here is,” she says. “Not only to be equipped with the right tools but to find housing for the people like the ones who saved my life. People like Bruce Percelay and Craig Muhlhauser—who I am fortunate to have as clients—have dedicated time and money to make the hospital what it is today.” In particular, Davison indicated that her story illustrated the importance of securing more housing for doctors like Brandon Giberson. “If only there was a way to get him to work here full time,” she says. “He will forever be my hero.”
Seven hours after arriving in the emergency room, clinging desperately to life, Davison was back home. She took the time to call Bruce Percelay and explain her ordeal and personally thank him for Nantucket’s remarkable hospital. It was an emotional conversation for them both, but the tears were of gratitude that the story ended the way it did.
A short time later, she was back to work, now equipped with an emergency protocol that Giberson provided her for the next time she gets stung. Unfortunately, she is at increased risk now. With each bee sting she received prior to this fateful sting, her immune system was getting increasingly triggered. Now that Davison has gone into anaphylaxis, her immune system is more likely to react in the same extreme way if she is stung again. But the gardener feels that it’s a price she’s willing to pay for her passion. And if nothing else, she has peace of mind that she will always be in good hands at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital.
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