First Aid Corps

Faith Sendelweck would just like to get back to a normal routine.

She goes back to Jasper Middle School on Monday; however, this once high-energy soccer player is forced to take it a little easier from now on.

Sendelweck says she does not remember much of what happened one Sunday earlier this month.

“All I remember is diving for a ball and throwing it back,” Sendelweck said. “That’s pretty much it.”

She was playing soccer in the gym of Jasper High School.

Sendelweck’s dad was with her and he remembers seeing her collapse into a curtain hanging from the gym ceiling.

Dr. Dean Beckman just happened to be playing basketball with his son there, too, and immediately ran to help.

“(She was) becoming a little bit lethargic, sat down, became unconscious and then lost her pulse,” Dr. Beckman said. “We started CPR.”

Turns out, Sendelweck had a congenital heart condition that no one knew about.

“The rhythm is messed up,” Sendelweck said. “You have a short bump and then a big bump and then another short bump. My short bump drags on too long before my next heart beat and messes it up.”

Sendelweck might not be here had it not been for a defibrillator in the gym.

“You could tell she was starting to respond because her color came back, her lips turned pink and she was moaning,” Dr. Beckman said.

Sendelweck now has her own defibrillator, an IED, implanted in her chest.

Sendelweck is going to be a spokesperson for pediatric IED’s at Kosair’s Children’s Hospital.

Keith Folkard, 50, a insurance underwriter, who was sitting in the Jarrold stand, was taken ill just minutes after kick-off of the match against Brentford.

But two GPs and Simon Bowles, a cardiology specialist nurse from the N&N, were sitting nearby and rushed to his aid.

They carried out life support and used one of Carrow Road’s automated electronic defibrillators, before an ambulance crew took Mr Folkard to hospital.

Mr Folkard said: “I’m extremely grateful for what they did and for all the care I have received in hospital since. I feel very humbled.”

The patient’s brother, Brian, from Upper Stoke, near Poringland, was also at the game, and both are season ticketholders, although Keith now lives near Southend.

Brian said: “Without the help he received at the ground I think we would have been attending his funeral. I cannot fault those guys at all.”

Paul Chaisson, 52, of Halifax said he started to feel dizzy while skating across the ice a little after midnight on Jan. 20 at the Centennial Arena.

“I saw the lights were getting funny and I knew I was going down,” Chaisson said Monday. “So I braced myself for it, and that was it.”

A paramedic from the opposing team rushed to his side, as did his teammate, Dr. Kirk Magee, who happens to be an ER doctor.

“As I got closer, Ken said he wasn’t breathing,” Magee said. “So we turned him over, and we called for the defibrillator.”

The assistant manager rushed for the defibrillator that’s kept at the arena.

The arena manager gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, while the experts did CPR and used the defibrillator.

Within minutes, they had a pulse.

Coming to, Chaisson still had his mind on the game.

“My teammates were all hovered around me and I wanted to get up right away. And the first thing I said to them [was]: ‘Did they call the game?’”

Chaisson plans to sit out the rest of the season will still be on the sidelines.

“As soon as I’m released from hospital, I’ll go back to the rink,” he said. And he doesn’t plan to stay away from playing hockey for too long.

“I can’t stay off the ice. It’s just in my blood,” he said, adding he loves “the camaraderie, the games, the fun, the exercise — the whole thing.”

Emergency medical workers were called to Alumni Soccer Field at Davidson College Saturday afternoon around 2:30 p.m. after a report that a youth-soccer official had collapsed during a game.

Davidson Fire Chief Jeff Almond said the man apparently had a heart attack and was not breathing.

As emergency personnel arrived, a doctor and a nurse who were attending the game were performing CPR on the man.

Emergency workers took over, continuing CPR.

They administered a shock using an automated defibrillator, and his heart returned to a normal rhythm, the chief said.

The man was taken by ambulance to Presbyterian Hospital in Huntersville, where he was treated briefly. He was then taken on to Presbyterian Hospital’s main location in Charlotte for further treatment.

Beyond that, his condition was not known late Saturday afternoon.

Witnesses on Wednesday night said a fan who was in the school gym to watch Lenape and Kingsway compete in the holiday tournament collapsed about two minutes after the start of the game.

The man was helped onto the court surface where the game was stopped and rescue professionals in the stands rushed to his side.

Lenape school resource officer Pat Robey of the Medford Police Department and fellow officer Andy Haggerty, who performs the same duties at Shawnee, were among the first to reach the stricken fan.

Lenape athletic trainer Bill Von Leer ran across the court carrying the portable defibrillator that all Lenape District schools have on-site.

From the stands came Dr. Dave Fischman, who has a son on the Indians’ junior varsity team, and Luann Robertson, a registered nurse.

For close to 10 minutes, the five used all their abilities, including the defibrillator, oxygen and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, to revive the unconscious fan.

Shortly before Medford Police, Medford Emergency Services and the Mobile Intensive Care Unit arrived, the silent gymnasium heard the words: “You’re all right. You’re going to be all right.”

The man regained consciousness and was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. His identity and condition were unknown Wednesday night.

“It was amazing to be here to watch all these guys do their jobs,” Lenape principal Tony Cattani said. “We’ve had the defibrillators in the district for about five years now. We’ve had people and classes when they graduate donate them to the schools. This is the first time we’ve had to use one here and to my knowledge, none of the other district schools has had to use one. All our administrators are trained with it. Some of our teachers are trained and all of our coaches are trained for it.”

Lenape’s athletic trainer also was pleased with the response.

“It was very nice the way everybody worked together,” Von Leer said. “The two officers, Pat and Andy, and Dr. Fischman and Mrs. Robertson all seemed to know their jobs perfectly. It just worked out really well.”

Dan Caplis, Denver lawyer best known as a conservative talk-show host and Ches Thompson, a 48-year-old ob/gyn, hadn’t actually met while they and about five other dads were playing football with their kids on the sunny Thanksgiving afternoon.

Thompson suddenly lurched forward and fell on his face.

Dr. Scott Bainbridge, a spine specialist also playing in the game, rolled Thompson onto his back, checked his signs and started CPR in the muddy field.

Dan Caplis the Saviour

Caplis, meantime, bolted to his SUV. By the time he returned with his defibrillator, Thompson was flatlining.

“Stay calm. Follow these voice instructions. Make sure 911 is called now. Begin by exposing patient’s bare chest and torso,” began the recorded voice in the machine.

Caplis followed the cues, placed the pads on Thompson’s chest and stood back as the AED shocked him with power Caplis describes as “ferocious.”

“Waiting to see if he would react, those were the longest seconds of my life,” he says.

Before Caplis and Bainbridge attached the AED to Thompson, he wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse. According to Cherry Hills Village Police it took only one shock from the AED to resuscitate Dr. Thompson.

Thompson regained consciousness quickly and strongly. The father of two boys is expected to make a full recovery at Swedish Medical Center for treatment. .

“I was in the right place at the right time with the right people,” he said Monday.

“It would have felt so incredibly helpless to have been there without the machine,” adds Caplis, co-host of KHOW’s Caplis and Craig Silverman show. He’s had the defibrillator for a year and a half because of another of his jobs, as a little league baseball coach.

“You can know nothing about CPR or AEDs and they can still save somone. They’re that good,” he said.

The freshman football game between Ponderosa and Oak Ridge High School was in the second quarter when Ponderosa head coach Chic Bist collapsed.

Chic Bist the Survivor

But medical professionals sprang into action, performed CPR and were able to revive Bist, according to Ponderosa High School principal Christopher Moore.

The California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports, “require(s) that there’s a doctor on the sidelines,” Moore said. “We had an orthopedic Doctor (Taylor) Vance on the sidelines. We’re fortunate that we also have a defibrillator on campus which was charged and ready. In this circumstance, it needed to be used.”

Vance, who is the team doctor, was aided by a cardiac nurse and another doctor who came out of the stands when Bist fell ill. Bist was transported to the hospital by ambulance.

“This is a time when everything worked well during an emergency,” Moore said. He pointed out that the school’s staff had recently taken CPR courses and training on the use of an updated defibrillator.

Moore said he saw Bist Friday morning and that the veteran coach was doing well and expected to be released from the hospital before the weekend.

Chris Seddon, of Burymead in Stevenage, is a duty manager on the Metropolitan line of the London Tube. He was working at Baker Street underground station when a woman, Jan Thompson, collapsed on a platform.

A trained first aider, Mr Seddon was called to the scene.

The 48-year-old said: “She had collapsed and gone blue and she was obviously dying. A doctor asked me to move out of the way. I told him I have a defibrillator and he said he didn’t know how to use it. I said ‘I do, I am trained.’ I shocked her twice and got her heart going again. If we hadn’t had the defibrillator she would have died.”

Paramedics arrived and Mr Seddon helped carry Ms Thompson up three levels on a stretcher.

Ms Thompson, who is retired, survived the cardiac arrest which happened in February this year. She was subsequently treated for a heart condition, and is grateful to be able to continue a fulfilling life.

Mr Seddon, who volunteered to be trained to use the automated external defibrillator (AED), said it is the first time he has had to use the lifesaving piece of equipment in an emergency.

“It was scary, but I was living on adrenaline for the rest of the day,” he said.

John Dow, 48, was playing in an adult hockey league two weeks ago at the Schwan Super Rink in Blaine, when at center ice, his heart stopped.

John Dow (left) & Dr Evan Domeyer

From that point on Dow only knows what his teammate have told him. “I dropped to my knees. I grabbed my helmet, and I closed my eyes and I fell to the ice.”

Enter Evan Domeyer, who was lacing up his skates in the locker room of an adjacent rink, when someone ran in looking for help. Domeyer wears a different uniform off the ice: that of a physician at Mercy Hospital.

“I was a little shocked when I got there to see what I saw,” he recalls.

Domeyer estimates 20 people were standing around Dow, who lay motionless on the ice. Wisely, someone grabbed the ice arena’s portable heart defibrillator. But it too lay on the ice next to Dow.

“Pretty much everybody was just standing around,” says Domeyer. “It was just laying on the ice.”

Domayer grabbed the device and put it to work. “We got him hooked up and it shocked him right away.’

Dow started breathing again. Two weeks and six heart bypasses later he’s been released from the hospital.

“I had what they called sudden death,” said Dow Wednesday from Mercy Hospital in Fridley.

“I’m grateful to have gotten to know him under these circumstances,” said Dow, his arm around Dr. Domeyer.

A 50-year-old Long Island man fell ill on a Brooklyn-bound A train, packed during the evening rush hour.

Officers responded to the emergency call and rushed to the scene with a portable automatic external defibrillator.

They found the good Samaritans, one of whom happened to be a cardiologist, performing CPR on an unconscious man on an a train.

When Mr. Kiernan collapsed on the floor of the A train headed southbound from 125 street, Dr. Sonia Tolani a cardiac fellow at Columbia Presbyterian just happened to have left her job early that day.

“It was just fate. I would have never been on a train at 4:30 p.m.,” she said.

Good samaritan Anthony Medaglia also left his job early and was able to help the doctor perform CPR all the way down to 59th street.

“And we just continued CPR chest compressions the whole way down,” says Medaglia.

Officer Joseph Dellauniversita, 23, who was appointed to the force in January 2008, used the device to shock the victim, but it did not work. However, a second attempt was successful.

“We shocked him again and he gasped for air and his eyes started moving and it was a great feeling,” says Officer Joesph Dellau.

The man was taken to the hospital, where he is currently in stable condition.

“I really have a second chance at life here,” says Kiernan. He adds, “I cheated death really.”