First Aid Corps

Three weeks ago, 13-year-old Kenzie Lahey was playing in a hockey tournament in Chester when he was hit in the chest with a puck. The young centre fell to the ice.

Kenzie Lahey the Survivor

At first, the coaches thought he had had a seizure. They called over a paramedic they knew who happened to be watching the game.

Kenzie had no pulse. He wasn’t breathing.

“I really thought he was going to die,” said his mother, Tanya Lahey.

Paramedic Allan Keddy started performing CPR. A doctor rushed over to help.

Keddy continued with CPR until an ambulance arrived with a defibrillator. One shock and a few more chest compressions, and Kenzie’s pulse returned to normal.

Kenzie wants people to learn from his experience. At the same time, he doesn’t want to scare anyone.

“When they see what happened to me, they shouldn’t think it’s going to happen to them. Don’t be afraid. Just go out there and play,” he said.

Kenzie has a followup appointment with a doctor in May.

He’s not playing competitive hockey, but has been practising his shot in his backyard.

A Maxwell couple got the scare of their lives when their 5-year-old son Blake came into their bedroom in the middle of the night to say he couldn’t breathe.

“In the back of my mind I am thinking that he is going to die and there is nothing I can do about it,” said Blake’s father Jeff Braafhart.

Luckily, Blake’s mother Kristi Braafhart is a nurse at Methodist West Hospital. She had given CPR before, but never to a child, and certainly never her own child.

“He said, ‘You know, mommy and daddy, I can’t breathe.’ So I told Jeff to take him outside. I learned a long time ago with croup, you take them outside into the cold air,” Kristi said.

Jeff explained what happened after that. “I got into the kitchen and right away he started to turn blue. Right away the skin color was going out of him,” Jeff said.

“His heart had stopped and everything,” Kristi said. Jeff told Kristi she should perform CPR on Blake.

“After that I remember checking for a pulse and he didn’t have a pulse, so I started compressions,” Kristi said. “I did about five cycles of compressions and breaths and then he finally took a breath so at that point it was just amazing. Honestly I didn’t think I would bring him back. So I was kind of shocked, and when he took that breath that was the most amazing thing I have ever heard: hearing him take that breath.”

“My mommy is the coolest mommy in the whole world,” Blake said Wednesday afternoon.

The Braafharts would find out later through a series of tests that Blake has a smaller-than-normal airway. And, at the time, Blake had the H1N1 flu virus. It all combined for a very scary night.

“We hope we can teach some parents and others the importance of learning CPR because you never know when you are going to need it,” said Kristi.

Ian Quinones, 13, collapsed in cardiac arrest during his physical education class at Rincon Middle School on Dec. 14. Within minutes, school nurse Debbie Moore was at his side with a defibrillator, a device that uses electric shocks to treat life-threatening heart issues, which the school had acquired just two years earlier.

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After two months in the hospital, Ian is scheduled to return home Friday.

Ian Quinones the Survivor

His father, Roger Quinones, said medical workers at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego called his son a Christmas miracle after fast action at the school, and with the defibrillator, revived Ian.

“He seems to be 100 percent normal,” Quinones said about Ian, who could have sustained a brain or neurological injury from the cardiac arrest. “That’s surprising a lot of doctors there.”

The defibrillator was a gift from the Rincon eighth-grade class of 2008. Physical education teacher Brian Hudson said the idea to buy the $1,500 device came after a firefighter gave a CPR class at the school.

“He said he didn’t understand why all businesses don’t have a defibrillator,” Hudson said. “We didn’t, and I had the same question.”

Hudson, an Associate Student Body adviser that year, suggested the eighth-grade class buy the defibrillator as a gift for a school. Coincidentally, Ian was in Hudson’s class when he collapsed about a two-and-a-half years after the defibrillator was bought.

Quinones said he was driving to work when he got a call from his ex-wife, Tammy, telling him their son had been taken to the hospital with a serious condition.

“I could hear from through the curtains saying, ‘He has no pulse,’” he said. “I couldn’t believe my little boy was in there.”

Quinones said a defibrillator was used on Ian several times at school and in the hospital to start his heart. After the incident, district officials began discussing the possibility of buying automated external defibrillators like the one at Rincon for all schools.

Bob Leon, deputy superintendent of human resources, said the 23-school district expects to spend about $40,000 for the defibrillators at all campuses, the district office and its preschool center by the end of the school year this summer.

“Talk about luck,” she said about Ian. “The one AED in the district happened to be where it was needed.”

Rincon Principal Jon Centofranchi credited the staff and the defibrillator with saving Ian’s life.

“It all happened very fast,” he said. “A number of teachers responded. The ERs at Palomar (Medical Center) both said it was the immediate CPR and the use of the AED that saved his life.”

Ian later was diagnosed with Wolff Parkinson-White syndrome, which creates electrical abnormalities in the heart. Quinones said his son has had a procedure to correct the syndrome.

Ian also was put into an induced coma for a couple of weeks to help his heart and body rejuvenate, Quinones said. As a side effect of one of the procedures, his right foot and leg did not get enough blood and he needed an operation to reduce swelling. He is still recovering from that surgery, Quinones said.

Centofranchi was a daily visitor at the hospital during Ian’s first week there, and Rincon family members bought gift cards to help the parents during their vigil in their son’s room, Quinones said.

“They’re just the most phenomenal people,” he said. “When you’re in a desperate situation, you really find out who cares.”

The parents of a six-year-old Pflugerville boy call his survival “miraculous” after he stopped breathing and his heart stopped last week.

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Brookhollow Kindergarten student Matthew Gates was at an after school program when he went into cardiac arrest.

“He’s a very rambunctious kid. He’s a six-year-old who likes to run and play,” Matthew’s father Mike Gates said.

Matthew’s grin hides a lifelong struggle against a rare heart disease known as Left Ventricular Non Compaction Cardiomyopathy.

Matthew’s family discovered the heart complication the day before his second birthday when he stopped breathing and collapsed. However, at that time he regained consciousness without the help of an AED or CPR.

Doctors told his parents he would not have issues until he was a teenager, but Matthew again collapsed last week at Brookhollow Elementary School in Pflugerville and stopped breathing.

After school teachers quickly administered CPR and used an AED to deliver a shock.

“His life was saved by an AED,” Mike Gates said.

Friday morning Austin-Travis County EMS demonstrated how an AED, or automated external defibrillator, can save lives.

Once the device is turned on it gives verbal instructions including placing pads on the front and back of the patient. The AED will then search for a pulse, and if there is none it gives a shock to the victim’s heart to restore its rhythm.

“It’s for anyone to use. Anyone can pull it off the wall, and use it if needed,” said CPR coordinator for Austin-Travis County EMS John Villanueva.

AEDs are available in public places including malls, airports, and city buildings.

In 2007, the Texas Legislature mandated that every school campus and UIL competition have an AED device readily available. Schools were supposed to comply by September 2008.

In 2006, an AED saved the life of Westlake football standout Matt Nader when his heart stopped during a game.

“Ninety-nine out of 100 people this happens to, they die. I am that one percent,” Nader said in September 2009.

Matthew also beat the odds, and is now recovering at Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas.

This week doctors planted a small defibrillator in his chest that will monitor his heartbeat.

Now Matthew’s family is thankful that he survived thanks to the quick action of after school teachers and the help of an AED.

“The doctors call it miraculous he was himself the next day. A lot of the kids don’t make it,” Mike Gates said.

A young boy is pulled from a pool unconscious, but survives, thanks to training his father learned years ago.

Brady Davis the Saviour with Son

Brady Davis jumped into action, after his two-year-old son, Branson, fell into the family’s pool in Heltonville, in Lawrence County.

Looking at this active, energetic two-year-old, you’d never know Branson Davis was near death just days ago.

“He is a miracle. He is a miracle,” said his mother, Jenny Davis.

But in the Davis’ backyard, there’s a now-dismantled, yet clear reminder of a tragedy narrowly averted.

“It’s something you can’t imagine. It’s hard. I see it every time I close my eyes,” Jenny said.

She sees the sight of her son lifeless at the bottom of the family pool.

Last Sunday, Branson climbed over the pool’s filter, presumably going after a toy.

“I went to holler for him and he always answers and he just didn’t answer and something told me just look and then I found him at the bottom,” Jenny said.

Jenny screamed for her husband Brady, and dove in.

“When I heard her screaming like I never heard her scream before, I knew it was something,” Brady Davis said.

Brady says he didn’t hesitate. He came out of the house, grabbed Branson, put him on the deck and immediately started CPR.

“He didn’t have a pulse, wasn’t breathing. He was blue. I finally got him back breathing. Then the first responders got here. They told me, ‘just keep doing what you’re doing, Dad. Keep doing what you’re doing’. It was just reaction…nothing I want to go through again.”

Brady learned CPR while serving in the Air Force.

He kept his training up-to-date through his job at a local quarry.

While he thought he might have to use CPR on a co-worker, Brady never imagined it would save his son.

He now says every parent should get trained in CPR.

“It’s real important,” Brady said.

“Because he [Branson] wouldn’t be there today if he didn’t,” Jenny added.

After two days at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Branson is back home, back to normal and doctors told his parents he has no permanent brain damage.

It’s all thanks to lifesaving skills, given from father to son.

“I’m glad I was there. Or I wouldn’t have my boy right now”