A lifelong Reds fan, Mr. Charles Trimble was at the game between the Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds with his wife, Sharon, and their 4-year-old grandson.
CharlesTtrimble the Survivor
As the game was under way, Mrs. Trimble took their grandson to buy a toy.
While they were gone, her husband started feeling short of breath. The family in front of him asked if he was OK, but instead of answering, he slumped over in his seat and his face turned gray.
Luckily for him, the president and scientific director of Allegheny General Hospital’s Allegheny-Singer Research Institute was sitting 40 feet away. He saw the situation and rushed over to perform CPR and chest compressions.
After a few minutes of compressions, Dr. Christopher Post, a pediatric ear, nose and throat specialist and a colonel in the Army Reserves, saw Mr. Trimble, a retired Air Force major, grimace. It was a good sign, he said.
PNC staff members and paramedics arrived with a portable defibrillator, one of more than a dozen in the ballpark.
Mr. Trimble was taken to Allegheny General Hospital in an ambulance
Yesterday, he was sitting up in bed, surrounded by family members, and talking. He doesn’t remember anything from the baseball game, but his doctors said the short-term memory loss is to be expected.
Through tears, Mr. Trimble described how thankful he was to Dr. Post for responding so quickly.
“He was a total stranger, and I’m just fortunate that he was in attendance and knew what to do,” he said.
“He was in behind me and saw me slump over and turn totally white,” Trimble said of Post. “He knew exactly what happened. I turned white. He knew it was critical, and he saved my life.”
