First Aid Corps

On April 11, Lori Duchow, a pediatric nurse at Riverview Hospital in Wisconsin Rapids, was watching an adult basketball game during a tournament at Nekoosa High School with her two daughters when she saw a man collapse on the court.

Duchow rushed to his side, told people surrounding him she was a nurse and instructed them to call 911.

The man was breathing and had a pulse, but when Duchow checked a few minutes later, she could no longer feel the beat of his pulse.

She instructed someone to find an automatic external defibrillator, a device trained people can use to shock the heart back into action.

While she waited for the machine, Duchow started cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the unconscious man.

When someone brought the automated external defibrillator, Duchow used it and then continued CPR.

“The machine tells you what to do,” she said.

Duchow said while she worked on the man, she continued thinking she didn’t want him to die in front of 150 people, including children, in the gymnasium.

While she assisted the man, referees from the game worked to get the children into an adjoining room.

The man’s heart started beating again. When he awoke, he didn’t know what happened, Lori said. He wanted to get back up and start playing. Lori insisted he go to the hospital with the ambulance.

The next time Duchow saw the man in church, he and his wife thanked her for saving his life. The man gave Duchow a big hug.

“I cried,” she said.

Michael Crane, 26, was at Novato High School gym in November and getting ready to play a playoff adult league basketball game.

Michael Crane the Saviour

Forrest Manning’s team had just lost and he had just sat down in a chair.

About 20 seconds into Crane’s game, Manning fell out of the chair and his teammates called out for help.

Crane is a graduate student at Arizona State University and is finishing his thesis for a degree in fire department administration.

He finished an 18-month internship with the Napa Fire Department in early 2008 and is trained as an emergency medical technician.

Crane gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions until Novato paramedics arrived.

Manning received shocks from a defibrillator and was taken to a hospital.

He is recovering from having two stents installed in previously blocked arteries.

With some help, Manning tracked down Crane, who recently moved to San Francisco, to thank him. “It’s strange because how can you really thank somebody completely who saved your life?” Manning said. “I’m sure he knows how much it meant.”

Crane said he got goosebumps when Manning called. “I was taken aback by it all,” he said. “I think everybody who was there that night has seen the impact of knowing CPR. Hopefully people will take the steps to learn it so they have the ability to save a life.”

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.

Donald Self said on New Year’s Eve he was working out at the Sunbury YMCA when he collapsed.

His heart stopped and so did his breathing.

“I just blacked out. I didn’t hear feel or had no senses at all,” said Self.

Someone found Self on the floor and pulled the emergency cord for help.

YMCA workers Lori Bohner and Nancy Shipe were there that day.

“It kind of automatically kicks in and you know what needs to be done and you just do it. Afterward you kind of get noodle kneed for a while. You think about it afterwards but we have quite a happy ending,” said Bohner.

“I was trained but never put it in action. Now I know I can do it if I have to,” said Shipe.

They and an off-duty officer jumped into action, using a defibrillator on Self and performing CPR.

Self was taken to Geisinger Medical Center where a mini defibrillator was placed in his chest.

“I’m thankful that I was there I wished it hadn’t happen but if I had to anywhere I’m glad it was there,” added Self.

“The proper words to say are thanks. I do appreciate what they did,” said Self.

Gary Burnham, 52, of White River Junction, collapsed from cardiac arrest while finishing his workout on a treadmill at the Upper Valley Aquatic Center fitness club.

Employees reacted quickly, calling 9-1-1 and administering CPR, according to Tim Rollings, executive director of the center.

They also used another tool, an automated external defibrillator, or AED.

Burnham, who had no history of heart problems, spent nine days in an induced coma at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and spent another week there conscious and convalescing.

He has since returned to work for the U.S. Postal Service in White River Junction and said he will return to the UVAC as well after finishing his six-week hospital rehabilitation program.

“I know it saved his life,” said Debbie Burnham, Gary Burnham’s wife. “If they didn’t have the AED there, we were told he would not have lived.”

Gary Burnham had been trained in AED use as a baseball and basketball coach at Hartford Middle School and can attest to their ease.

“They’re not very difficult to operate,” he said. “I think it’s very important that they be available everywhere.”

But proper response in a crisis is crucial, and he credited UVAC with just that.

“I feel lucky I was there when it happened,” Burnham said. “There are a lot of good people that work there.”

Jack Swem had just started his Wednesday morning workout last week at Sports Fitness & Fun on Route 17A in Florida when he passed out and began shaking on the floor.

Thinking that the 57-year-old was suffering from a seizure, trainer Jason Sanchez cleared the area around him and went to get a defibrillator.

Swem’s shaking stopped, and he seemed to be breathing, but a weak pulse signaled Sanchez to spring into action.

Relying on his training, the 27-year-old former swimming coach at Middletown High School worked methodically, first placing the pads on Swem’s chest, waiting for the shock, then administering CPR, and then holding Swem’s head up to let air in.

But it didn’t work. Swem was still unconscious.

So Sanchez initiated the procedure again, and then one more time, until — to his relief — Swem’s heart rhythm jolted back to normal.

By the time emergency workers arrived, Swem, a single dad, was looking around groggily.

The incident happened just about two weeks before Swem’s birthday. Thanks to Sanchez, the father will live to celebrate it with his 10-year-old son.

“Once it was over, and he was alive, it was the best feeling,” Sanchez said.

Heidi Bonnell, 36, a well-known Ottawa lobbyist and worked as an aide to former Liberal cabinet minister Brian Tobin, said she was riding a stationary bike at the Ottawa-Vanier Goodlife club when she went into full cardiac arrest.

Heidi Bonnell the Survivor

“The staff helped me get off the bike while another woman working out at the facility found a nurse in an exercise class down the way who had any sort of CPR or medical training,” said Bonnell.

By the time paramedics arrived, Bonnell still did not have a pulse and needed to be shocked with a defibrillator.

After spending three weeks in hospital — five of those days on ice, Bonnell was able to return home on Nov. 28

Rosemary Williams, a 76-year-old retired registered nurse, was walking toward the Eisenhower High School gym with her daughter, Connie Bublitz, to watch a game to be coached by her granddaughter, Sarah Bublitz at a junior varsity match between Eisenhower and Springfield High School..

Williams, who has a history of heart problems, suddenly dropped to the ground while holding on to her daughter’s arm.

“She wasn’t responding,” Connie Bublitz recalled. “There was no response in her eyes, her face, nothing. There wasn’t any pulse.”

Connie Bublitz, a Macon County employee trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, performed chest compressions and delivered a couple of quick breaths into her mother’s mouth.

Michelle Bonebrake, the varsity coach, had just walked over to the gym’s entrance, to speak to the athletic director about an official who had not yet arrived. She spotted the elderly lady on the floor near the door.

“I assumed it was a heart attack,” Bonebrake recalled. “I kicked my heels off, ran across the gym and got the defibrillator.”

When Bonebrake returned, Jennifer Parsano, an emergency medical technician who was pulling concession duty at the game, had taken charge of the scene. As soon as Bonebrake returned with the machine, Parsano said Williams had no pulse and was not breathing.

A couple of students, A.J. Madison and David Reed, called 911.

Bonebrake placed the “defibrillator next to Williams and attached the patches to her chest.

“As soon we put the patches on, it assessed her and checked her heart rate,” Bonebrake said. “If her heart was not beating it would shock her. And it shocked her.”

Because there was no discernible response, Bublitz and another woman resumed performing CPR.

“The machine said, ‘Please stop compressions,’” Bonebrake recalled. “The machine assessed that her heart was not beating. Then it shocked her again.”

Just as emergency medical technicians simultaneously arrived from the Decatur Ambulance Service and Decatur Fire Department - four of five minutes after they were dispatched - Williams took her first breath.

“It was kind of surreal,” Bonebrake said. “I was just holding her hand, and staring into her eyes. I was saying, ‘Breathe, everything is going to be all right.’ Every time I said ‘breathe,’ she would breathe. If I didn’t say anything, she would not breathe. It was so miraculous to me, that she was fighting so hard.”

“That was the first time we ever used it, and thankfully the first time was successful,” Hicklin said. “It was a miracle. It was an extraordinary situation. I was so proud of the quick thinking of Michelle Bonebrake and Jennifer Parsano. They made their Eisenhower family very proud. Today’s been a very emotional day for all of us. It made us stop and reflect on what’s really important.”

Connie Bublitz said her mother, recovering in the intensive care unit of St. Mary’s Hospital on Friday, is doing pretty well.

She commended Bonebrake and Parsano as loving, genuine people, who were in the right place at the right time, and did a great job of helping her mother.

Lindsey Roskos and Ron Matusiak were the first to reach the man. Both could tell immediately that the situation was serious as the unresponsive victim’s breathing grew labored and his pulse drained away.

Ron Matusiak the Saviour

“There was no doubt something was really wrong,” Matusiak said. “You could just feel the pulse go away.”

Roskos, who was CPR-certified as an employee of Black Hills Workshop, started chest compressions while YMCA staffers called 911 and delivered the AED to Matusiak.

As the AED coordinator for the Federal Aviation Administration office in Rapid City, Matusiak proved to be the right person in the right place at the right time.

“I didn’t think. I didn’t have to think. It went exactly as it’s supposed to,” he said. Matusiak credits the saved life to the “excellent training” that the Red Cross provides, to the YMCA for having an AED on the premises, and to God.

“I just had to push a button,” he said.

By the time Roskos, 25, had performed two cycles of CPR - 30 chest compressions followed by two rescue breaths - the defibrillator was ready for use and it was telling Matusiak (it speaks instructions aloud) that no heartbeat was detected and a shock was advised.

After yelling “stand clear” numerous times, Matusiak pushed the button.

“His body kind of arched up and … the minute I laid my hand on his throat, you could feel a pulse.”

Matusiak remembers thinking two things:

“This is a miracle.”

And … “Hey, these things work.”

Within minutes, emergency medical personnel arrived on the scene. Soon, the man was speaking and trying to sit up.

As the patient was being loaded into the ambulance, Matusiak asked paramedics if they needed any information from him.

“He said, ‘No, but this guy has something for you.’ The man reached up to grasp my hand. I started crying. I’m just so happy he’s alive. I just thank God for that,” he said.

The unidentified man remained hospitalized Thursday.

Two days later, Matusiak’s emotions were still close to the surface.

“It was intense. The most intense thing I’ve ever experienced - and I’ve had a divorce and a war,” he said. “Here’s this dead guy that, all of a sudden, is OK.”

The 6-7, 218-pounder Tennessee sophomore forward Emmanuel Negedu had finished a workout in the weight room and was leaving the complex with teammate Bobby Maze en route to a pick-up basketball game when he lost consciousness.

Emmanuel Negedu the Survivor

Negedu had gone through a more strenuous Monday morning workout and attended classes before returning to the UT weight room for a light session of upper-body strength training.

He did not complain of any pains, nor did he exhibit any warning signs before collapsing, according to witnesses.

He collapsed around 4:00 p.m. when according to university officials, his heart stopped beating.

Team trainers quickly retrieved a nearby automated external defibrillator and revived him.

Negedu, known to coaches, teammates and fans as “E-Man,” was conscious when he was transported to UT Medical Center.

He was undergoing an extensive battery of diagnostic tests and was to be held there overnight for observation, according to Vols’ associate athletic trainer Chad Newman.

Bruce Pearl, University of Tennessee Basketball Coach says “He is awake, he is alert and he is in very good spirits.”