Amanda Vaughan
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, September 12, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - The young man who waited in agony on a busy street for 20 minutes to get help is on his way to recovery, and glad to find out who helped him to the hospital.

Chris Hammerberg, is recovering after being discharged from Stanton Territorial Hospital, where he received surgery for a burst ulcer in his stomach. - Amanda Vaughan/NNSL photo

"I haven't felt this good in a while," Chris Hammerberg laughed in an interview on Thursday.

Hammerberg, who lay on a residential sidewalk after an ulcer burst in his stomach two weeks ago, had surgery Sept. 3, and has since been discharged from the hospital and is on his way to recovery.

Hammerberg still has a long row of stitches on his abdomen, and still has to take serious care in moving around.

However, he is in good spirits, and very grateful to hear that his helper had come forward, albeit somewhat anonymously.

His unknown helper wrote Yellowknifer an unsigned letter wishing Hammerberg well, and describing the turn of events that day.

"When my spouse drove by the bus shelter we saw him laying on the ground with bystanders on bikes around him. I am trained in first aid, so I told my spouse to stop the car," the letter reads.

Though Yellowknifer was able to contact the woman, she still wished not to be named.

The two young bystanders on bikes had informed the woman that they thought Hammerberg was intoxicated, and that everything was OK.

She said they thought an ambulance was on the way.

"He looked like he could be intoxicated, he looked like his equilibrium was affected, but it didn't look OK," the woman said.

She said that as soon as she got close to him, something the younger kids hadn't done, she was sure he wasn't drunk.

"If they had gotten closer, they would have known something was wrong," she said, but added, "they were quite young, though, and they were probably just being safe."

Being a first-aider, the woman, who also happens to be six-months pregnant, immediately introduced herself to Hammerberg, and asked him if he had consumed any drugs or alcohol, and then asked him if he was a diabetic.

"I saw him clutch his stomach, almost where the appendix is," she said.

Hammerberg's rescuer said the incident was eerily similar to the case of her own brother, who also had suffered a burst stomach ulcer as a teen.

"It seemed like a flashback to what happened with my brother," she said.

They waited for an ambulance a little longer, but Hammerberg was obviously in pain, and the woman said the two kids who had stopped didn't seem very sure an ambulance was on its way.

"He looked up at me and practically cried out the words 'please take me to the hospital, an ambulance isn't coming' so I did just that," the woman describes in her letter.

When she tried to cross the street to her car where her partner was waiting with her seven-year-old son, the busy traffic would not stop for the pregnant woman holding up the injured man.

"I was appalled that not one vehicle stopped to allow a woman who was obviously pregnant and a man who was obviously in need of medical help to cross the road," the woman said in the letter.

"If that was my kid, I would be very angry," she later said.

The woman was reluctant to be contacted for a thank you, but she agreed to have her contact info relayed to Hammerberg, who was eager to show his gratitude.

"I was looking, and I didn't even know where to start," said Hammerberg. "I just want to thank her so much, you have no idea."