First Aid Corps

The purchase of a home defibrillator turned out to be a very wise decision made by Coalmont residents Diane and Bob Sterne.

Although the couple had no history of heart problems the purchase was made because Diane worried about how long it would take for medical help to arrive to Coalmont (19 km from Princeton) if either of them should have a heart-related emergency.

On Dec. 30, 2011, while out shoveling snow, Bob Sterne’s heart just stopped.

While letting her dogs out, neighbour Suzie Michaud witnessed Sterne fall down, try to get up and then go down again. She immediately ran inside to get her husband Ray Michaud to help and then called her dad, Maurice Chartrand.

During this time, Diane was on the phone to 911. Within less than a minute, Chartrand and his two sons who were visiting for the holidays — Mike and Shane were on scene and began CPR.

Ray Michaud arrived just as Diane brought out the home defibrillator and together he and Diane hooked it up to Bob. The machine went to work and a shock was given.

“He gasped and then went out again,” said Michaud.

CPR ensued with Mike and Shane again until the defibrillator was ready to proceed. The second shock was given—Bob breathed and his pulse was detected by Shane.

By this time, thanks to the phone call chain of neighbours, Jodi Woodford, Chief of the Tulameen Fire Department, arrived and outfitted Bob with oxygen.

“It was scary there for a while,” said Chartrand, “but once we got him breathing, we knew he’d be okay.”

Due to treacherous road conditions, it took 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive.

“It was awful, said Michaud, “we could hear the sirens from the ambulance for 10 minutes before they got to us. That’s how bad the roads were.”

On Jan. 12, Bob Sterne had surgery to implant a pacemaker/defibrillator. For some unknown reason on Dec. 30, his heart short-circuited and the implant will prevent it from happening again.

According to Diane, the doctors are amazed with Bob’s condition.

“The quick actions of Maurice, Mike and Shane meant that Bob not only lived, but he didn’t suffer any brain damage,” she said.

The defibrillator traveled with Bob to Vancouver, as it stored medical information from his event.

“I would highly recommend this life saving machine to anyone who lives any distance from emergency response,” she added.

The help given to the Sterne’s did not end once Bob was finally loaded into the ambulance. Neighbours took care of their motel, called the Sterne children, took care of their puppy and drove Diane to Penticton.

Diane and Bob Sterne send their deepest and most sincere thanks to their heroes, friends and neighbours, to the doctors and nurses and to God for orchestrating the entire rescue.

“We will never forget you and we will never be able to thank you enough.”

Ian Owen, 50, from Bucknell, used a defibrillator on Mandy Edwards, 47, when she collapsed at home in April.

Ian Owen the Survivor & Mandy Edwards the Survivor

He was trained in using the equipment and had been given a defibrillator to look after as part of a community life saving skills scheme.

He said: “It was a funny situation to be in – this was the first time I had to put my training into action.”

“I gave CPR and administered two shocks using the defibrillator then put her into the recovery position,” Mr Owen added.

“If the Clun Valley Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) scheme hadn’t started, Mandy wouldn’t be here.”

Under the scheme, nine defibrillators have been put in remote villages and communities in the Clun Valley area of Shropshire, and 80 volunteers have been trained to use them.

Ms Edwards said: “I don’t remember anything [but] later found out that on the day I had done some housework and was on the phone to my cousin when I said I felt faint.”

Her cousin called Mr Owen who went round to his sister’s house before Gaye Edwards, a community first responder from Leintwardine in Herefordshire, arrived to help.

Ms Edwards was flown to Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and spent four days in intensive care at Hereford County Hospital before being transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.

Mr Owen said: “It was luck that there had been a training session the day before, it was luck that I had been given the defib to look after, it was luck that Mandy’s cousin was on the phone to her when she collapsed.

“At the end of the day I did what I was trained to do.”

It was 7:15 a.m. on a Monday morning in the Susquehanna Twp. home of Steve and Althea Sassaman.

Steve Sassaman said he felt a bit of indigestion. And then he pitched forward so suddenly that his face hit the floor.

“They always say that’s when heart attacks happen, on Monday morning,” Althea Sassaman said. “He just fell like a tree, right on the tile floor. It cracked so hard it sounded like the floor cracked.”

Althea Sassaman called 911 for what looked like a head injury but quickly realized the real problem — her husband’s heart had stopped and he wasn’t breathing.

She administered CPR until two Susquehanna Twp. police officers arrived, and lucky for her husband, one already had four lifesaving medals to his credit.

After they arrived at the Sassamans’ Mountaindale home, Somma performed rescue breathing and Adams did chest compressions and used one of the automatic external defibrillators that Susquehanna Twp. police keep in their cars.

When AEDs detect the lack of a heartbeat, they jolt the heart back to life with an electric shock.

Adams, a former EMT who trains department personnel in AED use and CPR, had to use the device twice — and the second time did the job.

“The cardiologist said the compression [from CPR] sort of keeps things going, but it’s the defibrillator that’s lifesaving,” Steve Sassaman said.

Helping a heart attack victim start to breathe again is “a great feeling,” Adams said. In his previous saves in 2003 and 2005, he used AEDs to revive heart attack victims, performed rescue breathing and prevented a suicide, he said.

“It’s great to know that you’ve made a difference in somebody’s life, and they’re going to get a second chance with their family and get some time with their loved ones a little bit longer,” he said.

Steve Sassaman, who had no history of heart trouble, remembers nothing about his cardiac arrest. He received catheterization and got three stents in his heart. He wears a monitoring device that could defibrillate if it’s needed again.

Without his wife’s actions and the AED on hand, Sassaman said he might not have survived.

“With every minute that passes, your chance of survival decreases by 10 percent,” the Susquehanna Twp. resident said. “If AEDs are right there, we can save so many lives.”

Althea Sassaman said the township officers kept their cool while she “was very bent out of shape.” She told them, “You have no idea how much I appreciate what you did.”

Sassaman remembered his only previous encounter with police — getting pulled over when his car’s headlight was out.

“A lot of times with the common man or woman, that’s the only time you think of the police department. Until something personal like this happens …¤you realize how valuable they are, and all the skills they have to help people,” he said. “I looked at their emblems on their sleeves, and it says, ‘Protect and serve,’ and that’s it. Protect and serve.”

Mary Robinson has little memory of the day last spring when her heart simply stopped for more than 46 minutes.

Mary Robinson ( seated ) the Survivor

But the 64-year-old Old Fort woman had a heart full of gratitude Monday, thankful for her husband, firefighters, paramedics, nurses and doctors who saved her life.

Robinson was the guest of honor at the first cardiac arrest survivor’s luncheon at Mission Hospital. The odds of surviving a cardiac arrest is only about 5 percent, so not many emergency or medical workers get the chance to celebrate with a survivor, said Frank Castelblanco, Mission’s director of cardiac emergencies.

“According to the odds, Mary really shouldn’t be here,” Castelblanco said.

Her husband, Lloyd, recalls Mary was in the kitchen, cooking their supper, while he was watching TV. She staggered into the room, sat down then “just went back,” Lloyd Robinson recalled. “I knew something was wrong.”

He then did something that saved his wife’s life, Castelblanco said. He dialed 911.

“That’s the most important thing, the first thing I would urge people to do if they see someone collapse,” Castelblanco said.

The dispatcher gave him instructions on how to perform CPR, and he started compressing his wife’s chest. Their dog, Abigail, was biting at his hand, but Lloyd Robinson kept up the rhythm until the first responders arrived within about five minutes.

Trading off, firefighters and then paramedics continued to perform CPR for 46 minutes, then applied a defibrillator until they had Mary’s heart beating again.

Gary Robinson, the couple’s son, was so impressed by his father’s action that he took classes and became certified in CPR. “I didn’t want to have to learn it on the fly like he did.”

The paramedics also started cooling her body to protect her brain from damage, inducing therapeutic hypothermia, according to William Kehler, director of McDowell County Emergency Medical Services.

After almost three weeks in Intensive Care and surgery for a defibrillator to keep her heart in rhythm, Mary Robinson was glad to be sharing sandwiches with her family and the people who saved her life. “I am so thankful to all the paramedics and the people at the hospital who didn’t give up on me,” she said.

When Sahara Labadie, 12, woke her brother, Tucker Labadie, 13, around 1:30 a.m. on June 27, she had some devastating news to deliver.

“She was shaking me and saying, ‘Daddy’s dead,’” Tucker said. “At first, I thought she was messing with me.”

Their mom, Jen Labadie, had gone upstairs to bed 30 minutes earlier. William Labadie — just call him Bill — was already in bed. But something was very wrong.

“I think he was mad about the cat, because he said something about it, and then his head flopped into the pillow face first,” Jen said of her husband. “Then he made the most horrible gurgling noise I’ve ever heard. I picked his head up, and he was gone. The doctor said he was dead before he hit the pillow.”

Bill, 39, had gone into ventricular fibrillation — essentially blood is not removed from the heart and it’s usually fatal.

Jen quickly dialed 911, and stayed on the phone while performing CPR before paramedics arrived. “My panic buttons were completely out of control,” she said.

Sullivan Fire Chief Neil A. Henry was one of the first responders on the scene.

“He essentially had no pulse,” Henry said. “It would come back and then go away again … I wasn’t expecting a good outcome.”

Jen could tell that time and hope were running out. “At one point, Al looked at me with the most pity anyone’s ever looked at me with,” she said.

After working on Bill for more than 30 minutes in the Labadies’ bedroom, paramedics put him in the ambulance for the trip to Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene.

“When I saw the ambulance pull out of the driveway with the lights going but no siren, and they weren’t going fast, I knew it was bad,” Jen said.

Tucker, his son, couldn’t believe what was happening. “It was like looking down on a dream from the top of a glass (ceiling),” he said.

All Jen could think of was that she didn’t want Bill to die outside the hospital, which would have prevented them from donating his organs.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of a world where his beautiful blue eyes weren’t around,” she said, fighting back tears.

Paramedics attempted to revive Bill with electrical shocks three times at the home and twice more en route to the hospital.

It seemed like a lost cause. And then it happened.

After being shocked for the fifth time, Bill suddenly regained consciousness, nearly an hour and 20 minutes after being considered medically dead.

“He came back with a vengeance,” Jen said. “He started ripping things out of him.”

Hospital staff immediately called for the rolling hospital unit, which transported Bill from Keene to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.

But questions still lingered over whether Bill suffered irreparable brain damage during the ordeal, Jen said. “We didn’t know if he’d ever be the same again,” she said. “He was hooked up to everything you could think of.”

Ten days later Bill returned home, his brain fully functional and his body on the mend. On Saturday he walked a little, watched some TV, sat on the outdoor deck and the family grilled shish kabobs.

“It’ll be six to eight weeks before he can be active, and he can’t drive for six months because of the defibrillator in his chest,” Jen said of Bill, who works as a bridge builder for Cold River Bridges.

Bill said doctors told him they can’t explain how he recovered after being considered clinically dead for nearly an hour and a half.

“They don’t know, they just say it’s a miracle that I’m here,” said Bill, who celebrated his 39th birthday June 30 while in the hospital. “She (Jen) did good, keeping me alive.”

“They don’t see people come back from this,” Jen said. “People don’t survive this.”

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the survival rate for ventricular fibrillations occurring outside of a hospital is between 2 and 25 percent.

“There’s no way to explain how he’s still here,” Jen said. “He’s the strongest, most determined human being I’ve ever met, which is why I married him.”

Bill’s longtime friend and coworker, James Hollar, spoke of his strong will. “He’s a fighter, and he never gives up,” Hollar said. “There’s not too many people who can come back from where he was … maybe nobody.”

Henry, who’s been a firefighter since 1974, said he’s never seen or heard of anything like it.

“Of all the calls like this I’ve been on, that’s the longest I’ve seen anybody go that came back,” he said. “It was remarkable, and it’s a good feeling.”

Jen Labadie, who suffers from insomnia, is amazed at how many things went right for her at just the right moment.

“If I hadn’t been ready to go to bed yet, I would’ve had no idea (that Bill had suffered an attack),” she said. “Or if I’d taken my (sleeping) medication a few minutes earlier, I would’ve been out.

“I do believe in a divine power,” she said. “But I don’t know why certain people get miracles and some don’t.”