First Aid Corps

It’s unusual for a 17-year-old boy to collapse from sudden cardiac arrest, and two in the same hospital at the same time is almost unheard of.

“We were playing games, and I decided I was going to ride a mechanical bull,” recalled Kyle. “I was on it, and I passed out. The next thing I remember is waking up at the hospital.”

Kyle’s mother, Lisa Bednar, was a chaperone at grad night.

“I was the first one on scene. We called for 911, and then there was a group of four of us that started CPR on Kyle, got the defibrillator and shocked him. We continued CPR until the ambulance actually showed up,” Lisa Bednar recalled.

Kyle Bednar the Survivor

A recent stress test that Kyle Bednar took showed he’s in healthy shape. Even though he experienced a close call, he says nothing’s really changed for him.

“It doesn’t even really feel like it ever happened. It’s kind of like life back to normal,” he said.

Kyle says he’s just a little more careful when he’s physically active. In the fall, he’ll be a freshman at North Dakota State University, majoring in mechanical engineering.

Both Ward and Bednar mothers say they have a new mission—making sure every high school is equipped with a defibrillator and people who know how to use them.

Tony Finnerty was behind the town goal in James Stephens Park on February 1 last as Mayo started their National League campaign against Derry.

Early in the first half Tony had a sudden massive heart attack. Tony had no pulse.

Standing right in front of him was Fionnuala Lavin, a Consultant Cardiologist at Mayo General. A matter of yards away the Order of Malta were positioned with a defibrillator. Ballina based Dr Fergal Ruane was the doctor on call at the game and was at the scene swiftly.

Within moments the Order of Malta’s defibrillator was in use.

Three blasts of the defibrillator proved crucial. It was, quite simply, the difference between life and death.

“I was very lucky, I know that,” Tony admits. “If the right people and the defibrillator wasn’t there, then who knows … It made all the difference.”

“Tony couldn’t have been in a better location,” adds Dr Fergal Ruane. “If it wasn’t for the defibrillator that was it. The key to it is the shock and the time of the shock. The first two minutes are the most important and Tony was lucky it happened where it did.”

“You don’t think something like this will happen to you. You always think it will happen to someone else, that there’s nothing wrong with you. But then it does happen to you and a lot of it then is luck. I happened to be somewhere where there were medical people and, most importantly, a defibrillator.”

Connie Schilling, an Edina resident, parked the car and entered Baker Road Life Time Fitness in Eden Prairie, but beyond that, she has no recollection.

That’s where Life Time staff and fellow members helped fill her in. Apparently Schilling had started out on the elliptical and was moving on to the next station when she collapsed.

Front Desk coordinator Mary Ann Hascall was quick to coordinate a response, alerting staff to contact emergency officials, clearing the area, grabbing the AED device and alerting operations manager Mike Ferguson to the emergency.

Ferguson, who has been a CPR instructor for the past 20 years, initiated use of the AED and CPR. This is the third time he’s had to use such emergency skills. Despite the experience, he noted that it’s extremely nerve-wracking.

“One of the benefits of an automated external defibrillator is the fact that it walks you through step by step,” said Ferguson.

Joining him in administering CPR was nurse Kim Haverstock, a Lifetime Fitness member, who happened to be at the club during the incident.

Haverstock was on the treadmill when she noticed an alarm going off, then saw Schilling on the floor off to the side. Schilling was blue and lifeless, recalled Haverstock, of Eden Prairie.

“We just kept doing CPR until the EMTs arrived,” Haverstock said.

“It was nice to see the process work for the patient.”, Haverstock said.

People ask Ferguson what it felt like, and the only word he can think of is “overwhelming.” He also said “We help others in time of need.”

Schilling “had absolutely no warning.”

It turns out her heart is fine, her cardiac arrest was not the result of heart disease or blocked arteries. Schilling is not predisposed to something like this. “It’s just that an electrical misfiring occurred.”

“These things can happen,” noted Schilling, who now considers it her mission to spread awareness about the issue. “Every day I give thanks for being here.”

“I’m living proof of how that was so important in saving my life that day,” said Schilling.

Mr Browne, 63, runs Australia’s oldest stockbroking company, Tolhurst Group. On Friday, March 27 this year, he’d chaired an animated, often acrimonious meeting in its 15th-floor boardroom. When it finished, he was looking forward to a calming cup of tea. He remembers beginning to pour one and then… nothing.

David Browne the Survivor

He was dropped by a sudden cardiac arrest. His heart stopped and he was, for a while, dead.

As a colleague began CPR, another ran for the defibrillator.

The electrode pads were placed on his chest, one just below his right collarbone and the other on the left side over his lower ribs. Voice prompts on the machine told the operator that a shock was needed and to push the button to deliver it.

Mr Browne’s heart began beating and he started breathing again.

The first ambulance paramedics, Dean Jensen and Desmond Keane, arrived on the scene at 10 minutes after receiving the call.

As they walked in the door, Mr Browne’s heart stopped again and they shocked him to restart it.

Mr Browne had always encouraged first-aid courses for the company’s 200 employees, bringing in tutors to teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR, and the like: “And I think one of them said to me that if we were going to do CPR, why not go the whole hog.”

“This might sound like hindsight, but the demographic of stockbroking, with the tension that arises, is probably a monte for somebody, somewhere, to have this sort of problem,” says Mr Browne. “I just didn’t expect to be the first guinea pig.”

“They’re easy to use, you’re prompted all the way, you don’t need any medical knowledge… All it needs is someone to grab that machine and turn it on.”

Their vacation was over, and Joseph Oginski and his family were waiting at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers for the flight home to Great Neck on July 4.

Joseph Oginski the Saviour

Suddenly, a gate attendant screamed, “There’s someone down!” Oginski looked at his father, Gerry, then rushed over, announcing, “I’m a firefighter and first responder. Can I help you?”

The 75-year-old victim was turning blue with no pulse or signs of breathing when Oginski, 17, a newly minted firefighter with the Great Neck Vigilant Fire Company, reached him.

Trained in CPR, Oginski asked a port authority officer for a pocket face mask to administer rescue breaths and advised the gate attendant to begin chest compressions

Five minutes later, another officer arrived with an automatic external defibrillator.

When the defibrillator was in place, Joseph used the equipment to shock the man, who did not respond. He resumed the rescue breathing and chest compressions, followed by another shock.

In all, it took three jolts from the defibrillator and continuing CPR maneuvers to restore breath and a pulse to the gentleman.

Oginski said, “I kept looking up at the man’s wife…she was my inspiration to keep going…keep trying. I was so ecstatic when I saw color come back into his face.”

The team used the device to restore the man’s pulse, and he started breathing on his own.

Two medical crews arrived shortly after to take over, Oginski said.

“I was happy after working on him, and it made me feel good to know that everything I’d learned and put to use was successful.”

“The feeling was incredible watching my son help save a life,” said Gerry Oginski, 45, a lawyer.

“My wife and I felt so proud to see his training kick in automatically, and to see him take charge of a medical emergency in such a calm and professional manner.”

“He’s a good kid, a good firefighter,” said Great Neck Vigilant First Deputy Chief Mark Meade. “He knows what to do without losing his head, and experienced enough to know what to do.”

On May 9, 2007, Cpl. Jeffrey Bauer was on routine patrol when he turned onto Solomons Island Road and saw a car stopped. He approached and found the man inside slumped over the wheel, suffering from a heart attack.

Cpl Jeffrey Bauer the Saviour

Bauer performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation and, after using his defibrillator, he was able to revive the man, who survived.

The next day, he was called to a home for a cardiac problem nearby on Tarragon Court where a man had collapsed on the floor.

“Less than three minutes later, Cpl. Bauer was on the scene and calmly utilized his skills with CPR and his (defibrillator) to revive the victim, ultimately saving his life,” Capt. William Krampf, commander of the Southern, said.

Both families have thanked Bauer for his help in their time of need, Krampf said.

“It’s my job, that’s it,” he said later of his lifesaving rescues.

“He enthusiastically does his very best and helps motivate others around him to do their very best in spite of sometimes very little recognition,” Krampf said.

The story of the former Jordan volunteer firefighter and pilot started more than a year ago when he took up running to keep in shape.

Kelvin Williamson the Survivor

Winter came, pushing his training indoors. Williamson got a membership at the St. Catharines YMCA to help keep him in shape until the spring when he could get outside again.

By May, Williamson was once again running on Jordan’s quiet, secluded back roads. By June 10, Williamson realized he missed his training regimen at the gym and joined again the next day.

After his usual 10-minute warm-up jog, Williamson sidled up to a stationary bike, hopped on and started pedalling.

Moments later, Williamson blacked out and stopped breathing.

“I had no warning, no symptoms. I just fell into the guy next to me,” Williamson said.

For the next six minutes, as he lay on the floor, three Y employees raced to save him.

Duty manager Angela Barney, Sally Jane Southern- Grice and Jill Huntley, with a defibrillator in hand that she had been trained to use only two days earlier, administered CPR, did chest compressions and used the machine to shock Williamson’s heart back into action.

After 260 consecutive compressions on Williamson’s large chest — Southern-Grice did 100, Huntley 160 — life returned to Williamson.

“It was amazing feeling your breath coming back on my hand. It really was,” Huntley told Williamson Wednesday.

With his heart beating again, Williamson was whisked to hospital. He woke up after three hours, with a sore chest and feeling like he had just had “a really good nap.”

Days later, the father of three was undergoing quintuple bypass surgery, after it was determined his heart attack had been caused by blocked arteries.

“You realize how much there is to live for,” he said about his ordeal.

“I have a wife and three beautiful kids I’m now going to see get married and hopefully have grandchildren.”

On Wednesday, he and his wife, Judy, returned to the Y to say thank you to the women who saved him. He gave each a token of thanks — a hug and an angel figurine holding a heart.

Despite her quick comeback, Southern-Grice said the whole experience was overwhelming. “I’m just overwhelmed — overwhelmed then and overwhelmed now,” she said.

“I feel relief to see him happy and healthy,” Barney added.

Barney, Southern-Grice and Huntley deserve credit, Williamson said.

“So does the Y for having the training and having the budget for a defibrillator.”, he said.

While driving home Sunday evening, Jim Boor was taking the Century Avenue exit in White Bear Lake when something in the ditch caught his eye.

“What we found down there was a car in the ditch with a man slumped over the steering wheel and it looked like he was having a coronary, having a heart attack,” said Boor.

Boor and another passer-by pulled the man from the car and they started CPR.

Boor said nothing really seemed to be working until the State Patrol and paramedics arrived with defibrillators. That is when he believes things took a turn for the better.

“He brought it down and they started immediately with the defibrillator on him. Which, I’m not an expert on anything, but as far as I’m concerned I think the defibrillator is what saved the man’s life,” said Boor.

The State Patrol agrees. Trooper Michael Olson hooked up the first defibrillator to the man.

He never thought he would use it, but it helped get the man’s heart started again- and he was rushed to United Hospital in St. Paul where he remains in intensive care.

“I was hoping it was gonna work. It’s always worked when we test it. This is the first time I had the opportunity to use it and see it work in the field. It did exactly what it was supposed to do,” said Trooper Olson.

The State Patrol said they were far from alone in this effort. Olson said it was a team effort with passer-by’s and other departments helping out as well, including Oakdale Fire and Rescue.

The man’s wife told WCCO she wanted to thank all the first responders, including the drivers who stopped to help her husband.

The social worker and mother of three had dropped off her two oldest children at a swim team practice about 9:30 a.m. June 29. She then headed for a rejuvenating run along a forest preserve path with her 13-month-old daughter, Tess, in a jogging stroller.

“I had passed another woman at one point, and we gave each other a nod,” McElligot recalled about a runner headed in the opposite direction.

“As I was coming back from the end of the trail at 17th Avenue, I came to a clearing, and she was stretched out in the middle of the trail. I was giving my daughter a drink, and then I thought something didn’t look right.”

McElligot said as she got closer, she realized the woman wasn’t breathing at all. A nearby resident had called 911, and another woman was helping the runner.

“She was cold and blue,” said McElligot, who immediately began performing chest compressions. “She would take gasps every once in a while, but then after a while, she was not taking gasps any more.”

McElligot started mouth-to mouth resuscitation, and soon a police officer arrived. He set up a portable automated external defibrillator and administered the first burst of power to shock the woman’s heart back to beating.

The electronic life-saving device for heart attack victims gave instructions aloud, and McElligot assisted the police officer. She soon was replaced by paramedics who arrived and took over.

“Once I stopped doing things and was just a bystander, I got really anxious,” McElligot admitted. “Once the paramedics got there, I started crying.”

“I didn’t even think about Tess that entire time, which was only about five minutes. She just sat there the whole time and didn’t make a peep. She was smiling at me.”

McElligot said she was glad to learn later that the woman, who looked to be physically fit and in her mid-40s, recovered after she was taken for emergency treatment to Loyola Medical Center.

“I was glad to be at the right place at the right time,” McElligot said.

Amityville Fire Chief Harold Miller said he arrived at John Martin’s home on Ocean Avenue on Saturday in response to a 911 call from Martin’s wife, that said her husband was having chest and jaw pain.

After Miller arrived, Martin, 59, was able to comfortably talk and provide health information to him and Assistant Chief Charles Scudlo, and to Amityville police Officer Dave Smith, as the three prepared Martin to be moved to the hospital.

But things changed suddenly, Miller said. “His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell forward.” Martin was unconscious and had no pulse, he said.

Miller said they went through the prescribed procedure of CPR and connecting a defibrillator, but in Miller’s experience, only about five out of 50 victims ever make it fully back at that point, he said.

“After shocking Martin once, his pulse came back, and color returned to his face“, Miller said.

Martin was taken to New Island Hospital in Bethpage for treatment for his heart attack, Miller said.

“He’s expected to make a full recovery,” he said Monday.