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When one Greensboro man became ill on an airplane in the skies over the western U.S., another Greensboro man was there to help.

Jim and Jeanne Gouge were flying from a business convention in Las Vegas back to Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Aug. 17. About the time flight attendants started serving beverages, Jim Gouge told his wife he was feeling queasy and lay back in his seat.

"I kept nudging him, and he wouldn't wake up," Jeanne Gouge said. She called for a flight attendant as her husband slumped over and started shaking.

Dr. Stephen Fry was sitting farther back in the plane, returning from a vacation. A friend sitting near the Gouges alerted him when the flight attendant brought out a tank of oxygen for Jim Gouge. Then the crew called over the public-address system for medical help. Fry went forward and was joined by a labor/delivery nurse, whose name neither he nor the Gouges ever got.

When he reached Jim Gouge, who was seated on the aisle, he found Gouge conscious but obviously not well. With a stethoscope and blood-pressure cuff provided by the flight crew, Fry checked Jim Gouge's heartbeat, blood pressure and pulse. Heartbeat and blood pressure seemed fine, but the pulse seemed thready, very light.

Jim Gouge slipped in and out of consciousness. A flight attendant asked Fry whether the plane needed to be diverted. Before Fry could decide, Gouge became conscious again. Then he took another turn for the worse. Fry found Gouge's pupils slightly dilated, often a sign of poor blood pressure to the brain.

A flight attendant reported that Federal Aviation Administration officials had said that diverting the flight or continuing to Raleigh was Fry's choice. Land the plane, he said. Now.

"Folks on the flight told me that when the decision was made to land the plane in Albuquerque, the plane went almost straight down," Jim Gouge said later.

Emergency-services personnel took the Gouges to a hospital. The flight continued to Raleigh.

Doctors determined that Jim Gouge had not had a heart attack or stroke, although they couldn't immediately tell what was wrong. They ran tests, and as hours passed and he received intravenous fluids, he began to feel better. He was discharged about six hours after having been brought in.

The doctors' best guess, Jeanne Gouge said, was that a nerve problem had temporarily cut off oxygen to her husband's brain. Jim Gouge said doctors told him they didn't think the problem would recur, and he said he has needed no additional treatment.

The airline put the Gouges up in a hotel and got them on a flight back to North Carolina the next morning. The day after that, they went to Fry's office to thank him.

"Greensboro needs to know about a fine doctor doing a good thing," Jim Gouge said. "I hope I never have an experience like this again, but if I did I'd wish he was on the plane, that's for sure."

Contact Lex Alexander at 373-7088 or lex.alexander@news-record.com