In 2013 Dr. David King ran the Boston Marathon and then rushed to Mass General Hospital to save lives. A decade later, the hero surgeon is preparing to run for a 14th straight time.
“I think I think about it every time I get on the treadmill which is probably six days a week, seven days a week,” he told NBC10 Boston.
Ten years ago, the Mass General trauma surgeon finished the marathon but not long after, everything changed. After the bombings, King rushed to the hospital to help save the lives of more than a dozen victims, working 30 hours straight. All these years later, he remains in awe of all of the survivors he helped to treat.
“I commonly think, how are they coping with that? What continues to amaze is how resilient those folks are,” King said.
And he has been resilient himself. King is now training for yet another Boston Marathon.
“Whatever the events of 2013 were meant to accomplish, I would say they failed miserably,” he said.
King believes that the interest and passion for the event has only grown since 2013. Some have called him a superhero but as King would say, the heroes were all around us on April 15, 2013.
“What 2013 demonstrated is that the first responders are the by-doers,” he said.
‘By-doers’ is King’s word for all of the bystanders who rushed to help near the finish line tie tourniquets and provide comfort.
“Any one of us can be a first responder under the right set of circumstances,” he said.
And in the months and years after, something else happened.
“Suddenly my e-mail inbox was filling up with requests of can you come teach us this?”
People wanted to learn how they could help. King created videos to teach people how to apply a tourniquet to stop the bleed and help save lives.
“I didn’t have to teach the urge to intervene,” he said. “All I had to do was teach people to best way to intervene and the rest would take care of itself.”
Asked if the awareness campaign helped save lives, King replied, “I know it has. It demonstrably has.”
He points to scientific data that shows fewer people are dying from limb hemorrhages than ever before.
King said we have come so far since that day in April 2013.
“When I think back over the 10 years, I just think about how those events of 2013 just highlighted how great humanity really is to each other,” said King.
All these years later, he said he still stays in touch with some of his patients. He says he’s proud to see how far they’ve come.
