First Aid Corps

On March 4, Bob McCleskey, CEO of Sellen Construction, was playing basketball at the Washington Athletic Club (WAC) in a tournament. The WAC team was up against the Multnomah Athletic Club of Portland. He was playing hard, giving his all the way he always does.

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The last thing he remembers before he came to, is that he was feeling very dizzy. No pain. Just very dizzy. Then he passed out. His heart stopped. He was having a heart attack.

Bob McCleskey the Survivor

“There was no warning. No chest pain,” he says.

When he opened his eyes, he recalls looking up from the floor into the face of a man. “This guy, this angel who saved me was saying, ‘Bob, are you with me?’”

Within a couple of seconds McCleskey knew he had fainted, “and I just thought I was fine and was going to play the second half of the game.” After all, this guy is a competitor. Of course he would think that.

The guy he calls an angel is Dan Baggett, a manager at the Multnomah Athletic Club. “(Dan) was sitting on the bench when he saw me go down. He ran straight across the court to me. He knew it was a heart attack.”

McCleskey says within 40 seconds, Nicolas Porter, the scorekeeper for the tournament, and who is a part-time conditioning attendant for the WAC, ran to the other end of the court to get the defibrillator.

McCleskey says he learned they instantly put the defibrillator pads on his chest, gave the “stand clear” signal and flipped the switch. He was told the shock started his heart, but only for a few seconds before it stopped again. Then Baggett did about 30 chest compressions on him before McCleskey took a deep breath and came to, sense of humor still intact. “I asked the coach what he thought of the reverse lay-up I had made at the end of the first half,” he says.

Let me just insert here that Baggett has done five of these procedures in three years, according to McCleskey, who was told that three of those people lived. And, too, the WAC has to be acknowledged as well, for its thorough life-saving training of its staff. Nicolas Porter is a fairly new employee who recently went through the mandatory training required by the WAC. he snapped into action almost automatically.

McCleskey recounts that the medics arrived in less than 10 minutes. He remembers being loaded onto a gurney, remembers the ride in the ambulance, remembers hearing the words “heart attack,” and thinking that was not possible. After all he was fit, young, handled stress well and had no history of heart trouble in his family.

Since that initial disbelief, he has learned that a build-up of arterial plaque had ruptured and completely closed off an artery.

At Swedish Medical Center, Cherry Hill, cardiologist Dr. Gary Oppenheim inserted a stent to open the artery that was blocked.

Think about this: McCleskey is 52 years old, 6′ 4″ , 192 pounds. He gets annual physicals religiously; has low blood pressure, low cholesterol and, up to now, no health issues. He has played sports and exercised at least three times a week his whole life. He eats right and drinks moderately.

Now he is on four kinds of medicines and realizes life is fragile. Still, he is exercising, can’t wait to play basketball with the same intensity, and along with his wife, Kathy, is trying to pace himself to do things in moderation – doctor’s orders. He’d tell you he’s fine. Feels great. Hasn’t missed a beat. Almost.

On Feb. 5, a long-time Othello resident, whose name was not released, suffered a heart attack at his home. Police Officers Jason Gilbert and Trevor Pottle were nearby and arrived on the scene before the ambulance.

Jason Gilbert the Saviour

When the officers arrived on the scene, the man was not breathing and did not have a heartbeat. They began CPR and attached the AED. When the ambulance arrived, the man’s heart had restarted and he was breathing.

“We were happy we had the AED, happy the officers jumped out there,” OPD Chief Steve Dunnagan said.

The man was transported to Othello Community Hospital and then to a Spokane hospital. He survived, in part because of the AEDs and officers Gilbert and Pottle.

Having AEDs out with the officers was the idea of local dentist Dick Rydman. The Othello Rotary Club raised the money necessary to purchase the units, 10 in total. The officers check them out and take them in their car while on duty.

“They are great little tools, well worth the investment,” Dunnagan said.

“It’s pretty self-explanatory,” Gilbert said. “It walks you right through it.”

Training for the AEDs is included in the department’s yearly CPR training. The officers have had the machines for about a year now. While they have been taken into scenes, a shock has never had to be administered. Still, they were worth buying because they are there if someone needs them, Dunnagan said.

“They are like insurance, expensive to have until you need it,” he said.

A waitress at Red Lobster restaurant on South Glenstone Avenue got a special honor on Wednesday. It wasn’t a birthday or anniversary but recognition for the way that Autumn Morris sprang into action and saved a man’s life.

Autumn Morris the Saviour

Morris wasn’t supposed to work last Aug. 6, but she did. On that day, Dan White of Rolla went into cardiac arrest at a table.

Morris immediately began CPR on White and continued until the fire department arrived. Morris visited his wife, Bernice, at the hospital, and kept in contact with the family through his recovery.

The Whites drove back to Springfield on Wednesday to see Morris honored with Liberty Mutual’s LifeSaver Award.

“Just think within yourself what it takes to be the one to jump to action,” said Red Lobster executive Bob Carver.

“I’m touched anytime someone makes a difference for someone else, and today I see that wife and husband together, so I know she made a big difference for that family, and her Red Lobster family makes a big difference with her, too,” said Gloria Morris, Autumn Morris’ mother.

This was the first time that Dan White really met Autumn Morris that he remembers. He says she invited him and his wife to the ceremony and they were happy to support her.

Red Lobster staff also gave the Whites a meal on the house that they could stay and finish in good health.

We have launched a new app, AEDSync, for Android users.

Developed by Mosync, you can download it for free at the Samsung App store for Samsung smartphone users, at the Android Marketplace for other smartphone users or HERE.

Here are screenshots of the AEDSync app.

This app lets you both locate the nearest AED, as well as add new AED pictures and locations into the app. The data will have to be reviewed before the new AED information is updated into the app, so please be patient.

Let’s all help to geotag public AEDs to save lives!

The White Tigers hosted San Marcos High Tech High in a tournament game on Dec. 8, 2010, Wes Schultz , a sophomore, had been competing with another player for playing time. Escondido Charter coach Keith Jackson had told both players that whomever demonstrated better defensive skills would play the most.

Jordan Schultz the Survivor

“Jordan demonstrated better defense,” Jackson said. “So he would have been playing a lot for us this year.”

Although Jordan didn’t start the game, he was on the floor late in the first quarter when Escondido Charter put a little run together, forcing High Tech to call a timeout.

Said Jackson: “He (Jordan) was flowing.”

Lori Schultz was sitting in the stands with Jodi Rea, the mother of a player on the opposing team. They got to know each other when Jordan and Rea’s son, Andy, played together on a soccer team a few years earlier.

After the buzzer signaled the timeout, Rea, a registered nurse, noticed one of the players appear to trip and fall as he joined the others filing back to their benches.

“She said, ‘Ooh, that kid just went down,’” Lori Schultz recalled. “And I looked, and it took me a few seconds to register that it was Jordan. I just figured he’d twisted his knee, because he was moving around a little bit.”

In the span of mere seconds, less time than it takes for players to leave the court and sit on the bench for a timeout, everything changed.

Over the next several minutes Jordan’s life hung in the balance. Time was precious.

Jackson saw the fall, and also thought it was a trip. But the former Marine, who took part in Desert Storm, observed that Jordan remained face down. Jackson initially observed that Jordan wasn’t moving, and turned him over. Then Jackson noticed small movements.

It looked, Jackson said, like Jordan was having a seizure. His bladder had emptied and his eyes were rolling back in his head. His Marine training dictated the next move. Jackson took out his phone and called 9-1-1.

Rea got out to Jordan and almost immediately directed Lori Schultz to call 9-1-1, too.

“It’s hard to believe that it’s actually something bad happening,” Lori Schultz said. “That he’s not just going to jump up. So it took a few seconds to realize that, hey, this is actually happening.”

After beginning compressions, Rea asked if anybody else knew CPR. Teammate Luke Portillo, a friend who had played video games with Jordan, stepped forward.

“For the previous couple months I was taking a program here at Charter called fire technology,” Portillo said. “They just taught me, like the month before that, how to give CPR. And when it all happened, I saw a lady trying to give him CPR … and I ran over there.”

Portillo, whose parents had both been combat medics, took over the compressions while Rea concentrated on Jordan’s pulse. Portillo’s mom, Angie, had come down and was monitoring Jordan’s pulse, which was weak.

Jordan was in cardiac arrest. To this day, the Schultzes don’t know what caused it.

“I’ve been teaching and coaching for 45 different years,” Escondido Charter executive director Denny Snyder said. “That was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Five minutes, 15 seconds after Lori Schultz placed the call to 9-1-1, the paramedics arrived. She said they are trained to keep the call open until they make visual contact, then hang up.

Jackson said Jordan’s pulse stopped three times as he lay on the court.

The paramedics hit him twice with a defibrillator, then transported him to Palomar Hospital. Later that night, Jordan was taken by helicopter to Rady’s Children’s Hospital in San Diego.

Jackson said that he talked to a paramedic that night who said that the work of the people on the scene might have saved Jordan’s life, and at the least, took action that would hasten his recovery.

“Everybody that came in and was there kept their poise,” Snyder said.

Jordan spent two days in a coma. Then he woke up.

“I didn’t know what day it was,” Jordan said. “I didn’t know where I was, didn’t know what was going on. I had no idea what happened. It’s a weird feeling. I woke up and they rushed to my bed, like, ‘You’re alive.’ ”

Jordan still has no recollection of the events of that day or the day before. The last thing he remembers was going to the game two nights earlier.

Escondido Charter honored him as its most inspirational player last Thursday. In presenting Jordan for the award, Jackson alluded to his “medical issue,” but said little else about the events of Dec. 8.

“If you don’t think that’s inspirational, you don’t know what inspiration is,” Jackson said. Then he introduced Jordan. The mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers seated around cafeteria tables rose for a standing ovation.

Jordan eventually recovered enough to play in the team’s final game, missing two shots but grabbing a rebound in 6 minutes of action. And he is very determined to rejoin the team next year, when he is a junior.

His recovery was remarkably quick given the nature of his condition. Jordan was released from the hospital after two weeks, though he still had trouble with simple tasks such as walking from his bedroom to the bathroom, at that point. It was nearly two months before he returned to school.

Even now, Jordan notices that his handwriting is still a little sloppy. But his grip is strong when he shakes hands and he speaks of his ordeal in a clear, steady voice.

He was asked if he thought about basketball while he was laid up.

“The whole time,” he answered.

Wes Schultz laughed.

“That was one of the first things we did is go out (to the backyard basketball court),” he said. “… Jordan wanted to play.”

Portillo said that his friend doesn’t talk about the incident much. But not too long ago, while they were sitting in the bleachers watching another game, the topic came up.

“He was like, ‘Dude, I owe you my life,’ ” Portillo said. “I was like, ‘Man, you don’t owe me anything. I’m just glad you’re here.’ We just left it at that.”