A Michigan firefighter volunteered to pay the electricity bill of a teen whose ventilator was almost out of battery power. The fireman agreed to pay the power bill of the 18-year-old who suffers from a muscular-weakening disease after the local fire department responded to a medical call to the teen's home, and learned that the local electric company had cut power to the house.
Ryan McCuen works as a firefighter at the Clinton Township Engine 5. He was responding to a routine call to the Detroit suburb mobile home when he learned about the case of Troy Stone.
Stone suffers from a serious form of the muscle-wasting disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy, according to KXLY. When the firefighter walked into his home the teen's ventilator emergency battery was running out of juice.
McCuen argues that he was just doing his job by paying the electric bill. When he arrived at the mobile home Stone only had limited movement in his arms and legs, and could not survive without the breathing machine.
Last December the Michigan teen had a tracheotomy. It involves making a cut in the windpipe so the patient can breathe better.
Due to high medical costs Stone's family had fallen behind in their bills, and still owed payments to the local utility company.
Christy Stone is Troy's mother. She explains that the family's electric bill became three times higher since a breathing tube had been inserted in her son's trachea because seven machines are needed to keep Troy alive.
The Stones' family doctor wrote a letter to DTE Energy explaining that their home needed electrical power to keep the life support equipment on. However, the company still cut off the power and claimed the letter had a nurse's signature instead of the physician's name.
A DTE Energy spokesperson has called the event involving Troy "unfortunate" and has praised the firefighter for his kind action.
McCuen has worked for the fire department for over seven years. When he heard Christy on the phone talking with DTE had knew the only solution was to pay the electric bill.
In related news a group of off-duty Massachusetts firefighters recently saved a woman's life. They were passing by the scene of a two-car accident when they freed the woman from the vehicle and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), according to The Sun Chronicle.