They’re just three big words – Automated Electronic Defibrillator – but for 16-year-old Zachary Harper and his family, they’re words to live by.
Zachary Harper (2nd from left) the Survivor
On an otherwise routine school day last month, Harper, a junior, was minding the school store with a couple of friends when he suddenly grew light-headed.
Seconds after he staggered to teacher Dana Bourassa’s classroom to get a pass for the nurse, it was lights out.
“That’s the last thing I remember,” the slim, black-haired teen said this week at home, where he and his family gathered to piece together the seconds and minutes that, had it not been for nurse Mary Arrowsmith, assistant principal Diane Doran, and teachers Bourassa and Jim St. Onge, would almost certainly have been his last.
Craven said that although Arrowsmith restored Harper’s heartbeat with the AED “in about a minute,” the teen wasn’t yet out of the woods. “He was lost again in the hallway, and there were about four more life-saving maneuvers that were performed on the way to the hospital,” Craven said.
Harper was first rushed to Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua, then flown – in 16 minutes, according to mom Deb Harper, who accompanied him – to Children’s Hospital Boston.
A lot of things went through his head as he lay at Children’s Hospital Boston recovering, Harper said. One vow he made, for instance, was to swear off of junk food forever.
“Well, I guess that’s been broken a little bit since I got home,” he said Monday with a sheepish grin.
