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Now a retired roadie, the Evans, Georgia resident once drove trucks for some of the biggest names in music, including Gladys Knight, the Black-Eyed Peas, the Jonas Brothers, and Earth, Wind & Fire.
“I would spend about 300 days of the year on the road,” Calhoun said.
But it was a fateful trip hauling equipment for the Zac Brown Band to New York that would change his life forever.
In early September 2021, Calhoun was just coming off an all-night drive to Long Island’s Jones Beach Theater when he suddenly collapsed behind a tour bus.
Doctors would later inform his family that he suffered a series of grand mal seizures after having an abscess in his brain removed three years prior.
The sudden emergency almost certainly would have ended in tragedy if not for the observant eye of Michelle Chester, a nurse practitioner at Northwell Health who spotted Calhoun lying on the ground.
As luck would have it, Chester was working at the venue that day as part of a medical team brought in to test Zac Brown Band members and their road crew for COVID-19.
“Upon discovering Mr. Calhoun blacked out in the bus, she immediately sprang into action,” Northwell Health said in a statement. “It took all her strength to pull Mr. Calhoun out of the seat and lay him flat.”
It was at that point that Calhoun went into a seizure and stopped breathing altogether.
Chester and a second nurse, Kaya Wynter, worked to keep Calhoun’s airway open and checked his vital signs while trying to diagnose a cause.
They eventually managed to stabilize him until medics arrived and took him to the hospital.
Calhoun spent more than a week at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, much of it in an induced coma after his heart stopped in the emergency room.
The medical team who cared for him had no idea what happened to him until a mutual friend put them in touch a year later.
Finally, on Friday, Nov. 17, Calhoun returned to Nassau University Medical Center with his wife Vonda for an emotional reunion with Dr. Chester and nurse Wynter.
The touching moment featured plenty of tears, hugs, and thank-yous.
“When someone goes out of their way to do something special for you, you just have to say thank you,” Calhoun said. “I have to thank God and Dr. Chester for giving me a second chance at living my life.”
Chester told those gathered that she considers it “a blessing” to work in health care.
“In health care, it’s about being prepared for everything that comes your way,” she said. “And when you get to see the end results of your work, and in Mr. Calhoun’s case, see that there are no residual effects, it’s just overwhelming.”
Calhoun’s wife Vonda said if not for Chester and Wynter being there that day, she’s certain things would have turned out much differently.
“This story shows the positive character of the Northwell staff, how they all jumped into action when they saw my husband,” she said. “How can we thank you enough?”
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