We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.
John McCloskey (left) with Virginia Fulbright the Saviour
When McCloskey’s heart stopped last summer, the circumstances surrounding his near-death couldn’t have fallen into place much better than they did
For starters, the 76-year-old High Point man nearly had stayed home on July 16, 2008, before deciding at the last minute to join his wife, Rosalie, on a visit to see their grandson.
“If I had stayed home, I would’ve been gone,” McCloskey says matter-of-factly.
Second, McCloskey almost forgot his sunglasses. As he headed back into the house to retrieve them, Rosalie suggested, “OK, I’ll drive.” Had he been driving – which would’ve been the norm – both of them could’ve died when his heart stopped.
And third, when McCloskey slumped over in the front passenger seat, Rosalie just happened to be driving by Deep River Family Medicine on Premier Drive, so she hastily pulled into the parking lot and ran into the office yelling for help.
At that moment, physician assistant Virginia Fulbright emerged from a patient examing room and heard the cries for help. She instructed the office staff to call 911, then ran out to the parking lot, where she found McCloskey still slumped over in his seat.
“He was not breathing, and he didn’t have any heartbeat,” Fulbright recalls. “I sent some of the staff inside to get the emergency equipment, and a couple of people helped me pull him out of the car and put him on the ground, so I could start doing CPR.”
There was one other thing working in McCloskey’s favor: Fulbright had access to – and knew how to use – a defibrillator, an electrical device that can shock the heart back into its normal rhythm.
She immediately shocked him and restarted chest compressions. After checking again for a pulse – and finding none – she shocked him again and continued with more chest compressions.
Just as paramedics arrived on the scene, McCloskey started having some spontaneous breathing, and his heart had begun beating again. Paramedics swiftly loaded the patient onto the ambulance and transported him to the hospital, where he made a gradual recovery.
Fulbright says she was “flabbergasted” to see McCloskey start breathing again.
Fulbright says she was “flabbergasted” to see McCloskey start breathing again.
“Apparently, I was clinically dead for about five minutes, but Virginia kept working on me,” McCloskey says. “I call her “my angel without wings.’”
