We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.
Adam Bassak the Survivor
Eau Claire Regis tennis player Matt Folstad, 16, was competing in a match when his parents noticed people congregating around Adam Bassak, Baldwin-Woodville’s assistant tennis coach.
John Folstad, 51, director of physician recruitment and relations at Sacred Heart Hospital, thought he might be able to assist.
When he approached, Bassak was facedown and someone was trying to feel for a pulse.
“I could see from his face that it was very blue in color,” John Folstad said of Bassak.
At that time, John Folstad and Duane Myklejord, a coach from Marshfield Columbus High School who is an anesthesiologist, used the log-roll technique to turn Bassak onto his back.
John Folstad and Myklejord determined Bassak had no pulse. Myklejord began rescue breathing, and John Folstad began chest compressions.
An athletic trainer from Marshfield Clinic, Ashley Lagerquist, who was at the tennis meet to assist players with injuries, already had called 911 and unpacked her automatic external defibrillator.
John Folstad and Myklejord continued CPR while the defibrillator was attached. Everyone stopped while Julie Folstad administered the shock to the heart, and then CPR was continued.
“Immediately we couldn’t feel a pulse,” John Folstad said. “We started CPR again and he started to wake up. He started to breathe on his own.”
Bassak, 30, of Woodville, remembers little. “The only thing I remember is right before it happened,” Bassak said on Tuesday.
Minutes before he collapsed, Bassak ran a tennis ball from an official to the courts. He guessed the distance was a couple of hundred yards.
“I remember feeling short of breath and lightheaded,” he said. “Once I came to, they asked what day it was, if I knew where I was – the typical questions. I remember I gave them the exact address of the high school.
“I was completely coherent.”
Bassak, who has a hereditary heart defect, had been in cardiac arrest. Neither he, nor any of his family members who have the same heart defect, has experienced cardiac arrest before, he said.
He considers himself lucky.
After he was revived, Bassak was taken by ambulance to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield where he was equipped with an internal defibrillator.
“I thank the people that were there and helped,” Bassak said. “I’m very lucky that all of those people were there. I’m lucky to be telling the story.”
