First Aid Corps

He can’t recall the first man’s name, but Etobicoke hockey arena senior operator Art Jones said “he’s back playing hockey” and they regularly chat.

Art Jones the Saviour

“He just went down on the ice, but a couple of the guys are city workers and realized what was happening,” he said.

Doug Clancy, then manager of an arena at Erindale College, joined him doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but they feared “we were going to lose him.”

Jones, who trained on the defibrillator about one month earlier, fetched the portable unit and got the victim’s heart beating with one jolt before paramedics arrived.

“I was at the other end of the lobby with my partner, Marco, and I just said ‘call 911′ and we started running and I grabbed the defibrillator and in I went,” he said, noting the arena has two public access defibrillators on-site for such incidents.

When Jones arrived at the scene, he found a 52-year-old regular named Wally down on the ice - unconscious, but still breathing.

“When I got over to (Wally) I started pulling out the unit and got his shirt up just in case he went down and, sure enough, he started going blue and stopped breathing. I had to slap the pads on his chest and hit him with a jolt,” Jones recalled.

With just the one reviving jolt, Wally’s eyes fluttered, his heart restarted and he was breathing again, albeit with laboured breaths, Jones said.

Friends were preparing to do mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions Thursday, but Jones intervened. “He’s going to be okay,” he said.

Grateful at the recognition, especially from arena regulars, he stressed “it’s important for people to realize the units are there, and to get training. Seconds count. If you can save a life, that’s what it’s all about.”

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.”

Derek Robison, a Weymouth firefighter since 2006 and a certified emergency medical technician, 38, was watching the hockey game of his 6-year-old son, Donovan, when a man wearing hockey skates came rushing out from one of the other rinks shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday.

He was looking for a doctor.

“He said someone needed help,” Robison said.

Robison and a nurse, whose daughter plays on his son’s Weymouth Youth Hockey team, ran over to see what they could do.

“Someone said he (McCracken) had just come off the ice when he collapsed near the bench,” Robison said.

Others had gathered around retired police Lt. Joseph McCracken, 65, and were trying to help him when the unidentified nurse and Robison pitched in with their life-saving efforts.

The nurse and the firefighter used CPR to keep retired police Lt. Joseph McCracken, 65, alive with blood flowing to his heart and brain.

That’s when a pro-shop worker, Derek Benton saw what was going on, suspected the victim was suffering from a heart attack and knew the nearest defibrillator unit was across the street at the Queen Anne Nursing home. “I just bolted out the door, “said Benton. “I knew he needed the de-fib unit.”

“I put one pad on one side of his chest,” said Duxbury firefighter Jim Kittredge,” and Sharon Demio put the other pad near his heart.”

A Hingham Fire Department ambulance arrived minutes later to take McCracken to South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, where he was listed in good condition Tuesday.

Hoby Taylor, Pilgrim’s president, said McCracken has been renting ice time for men’s hockey games for many years.

“He’s a very, very nice man,” Taylor said. “It’s very rare that something like this happens.”

“I can’t say thank you enough to the people who helped my father,” said Lisa McCracken, the daughter of Joe McCracken, who had a heart attack while playing hockey over the weekend.

“We did what we were trained to do,” Robison said.

It was near the end of the final hockey game of the season for a group of Nanaimo oldtimers hockey players and one that would forever change the life of Paul Walters.

The 52-year-old harbour patrol captain had enjoyed the sport for four decades and was nearing the end of the Dec. 21 matchup when he felt an intense pain in his chest that he thought might be attributed to his asthma.

Walters recalls lacking the classic heart attack symptoms, such as shooting pain down an arm or chest and told his team he was packing in for the night when he felt sick.

His chest pain intensified and as he changed in the dressing room, he told someone to grab fellow player Dave Sheepwash, an off-duty paramedic also trained in advanced life support.

Sheepwash asked someone to call 911 just as Walters collapsed and stopped breathing.

Sheepwash and players Jeff Braun and Pat O’Dwyer took turns administering CPR and used the AED ( automated external defibrillator ) which was available at the Nanaimo Ice Centre which was fitted in late 2008, as they waited for paramedics.

It took five hours to stabilize Walters, who was transported to a Victoria hospital where he learned an artery was badly blocked. After surgery he was moved back to Nanaimo Regional General Hospital and released on Boxing Day. He will continue his recovery at home.

It is a happy Christmas story for Walters but the incident has given life a new meaning for the active father, who only three weeks earlier had received a good bill of health after a routine physical.

“My thoughts are now to take fitness more seriously,” said Walters on Saturday. “You get your life back and you find out you have so many friends. I’m very humbled by the reaction I’ve had.”

The game was in the last 10 minutes of the tournament final when witnesses say Sgt. Perry Batchelor, an Altona police officer, reached down for the puck during a stoppage of play and collapsed.

The witness said 911 was called and several nurses, and an RCMP officer in the crowd were among those who sprang into action in front of the shocked crowd.

They grabbed the defibrillator from its place in the Sunflower Gardens lobby, and used it along with CPR for what witnesses say was 15 minutes until paramedics arrived.

He was taken to the Health Sciences Centre and went into surgery two days later.

The defibrillator used to save Perry Batchelor’s life was acquired by the Millennium Exhibition Centre, thanks to the hard work of Batchelor himself.

Recreation services manager Ron Epp said the reason that device was there, was Perry Batchelor.

“He was the driving force behind getting it in,” Epp said.

“A lot of stars had to align in order for me to be here,” Batchelor said from his home in Altona yesterday.

“The reality is people can have a heart attack just getting up from a chair,” he said. “So it makes sense to have them where large groups of people are or where people are exerting a lot of physical energy. (Defibrillators) save lives … they really do.”

“I’m pretty lucky,” he said. “I was feeling fine after that game, too. It just shows how quickly things can change.”

Lt. Glenn Cooney and firefighters Paul LaPointe and Mark Lockyer belong to a hockey league.

On Sept. 25, the three of them, all off duty, happened to be at the Reading Ice Arena taking advantage of a free skate session when suddenly a man collapsed on the ice, Fire Chief James Tutko said.

The guys assessed the man’s condition and accessed the defibrillator on site.

They performed CPR on the victim, who was in cardiac arrest, and administered a shock with the defibrillator, Tutko said.

“By the time the Reading firefighters got there, the man had a pulse and was breathing on his own,” Tutko said. “On Oct. 13, he was moved from the hospital to rehab.

“I think they took the training they received in the department and performed the necessary steps to keep this man alive until he could get to the hospital,” Tutko 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.

The 56-year-old man lay on the ice surrounded by his teammates after he suffered an apparent heart attack.

Dana Clarke the Saviour

Dana Clarke rushed to the ice surface and began to administer CPR.

He then used a defibrillator on the man when he couldn’t detect any vital signs.

“I realized quickly that he was unconscious, his eyes didn’t have much life to them, and his skin colour wasn’t very good. He wasn’t breathing,” said Clarke, 35, a city of Ottawa facilities operator at the Earl Armstrong Arena.

“I asked the teammates to remove his equipment because I needed a bare chest so I could start using the defibrillator machine on him.”

Clarke said he started performing CPR at the same time on the man and at first he wasn’t coming around.

Clarke didn’t panic, but said he activated the defibrillator and after a few moments the man appeared to be revived and he saw his mouth move and his eyes blink.

“So I asked his teammates that we need to talk to him in a loud manner. We started yelling, ‘Hey, André.’ Then he began to move his head slightly,” said Clarke, adding the victim wasn’t aware of what had happened to him.

“We’re talking to him for another minute or so, asking him questions. Then I said, ‘André, why are you here, what are you doing?’ All he could say was ‘hockey game.’ I said you’re right.”

Clarke said it was an “emotional experience” reviving the man from near death. It was something he’s never had to do before in his 20-year career as a city employee working at arenas and swimming pools.

“I have to thank the city for the training that they give us and having these defibrillator machines readily available and in close proximity. The whole process worked to save this gentleman’s life and I’m so glad we were able to do that.”

The man went to hospital and is reportedly in stable condition.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Without warning, Greg Boorsma, 39 years old, became a little shaky and collapsed on the bench during a recreational hockey game during the Aaron Kitchen Memorial tournament.

Beside him was Paul Lymburner, who has been in similar situations and recognized the severity of the situation. He has administered CPR in the past and he knew Greg required it. He immediately called out for teammates to find his wife Colleen, who is a nurse and was watching, along with another friend and nurse, Tracy House.

They rushed to the bench and found that Greg’s vital signs were absent.

Another teammate, Mike Schmalz, was on the ice when the episode began.

But upon realization that the nurses could not get a pulse, he immediately rushed to the lobby to retrieve the recently-installed defibrillator. Others called for staff to call 911.

Greg was transported to Haldimand War Memorial Hospital before being transferred to Hamilton General, where he remains in stable condition.

Although the situation was grave at the time, Joanie said, “Thank God it happened when it did and there people there to help and do what needed to be done,” she said.

Joanie was very thankful for her friends and Greg’s teammates. “We owe Colleen and Tracy a world of thanks. They’re angels,” she said.

“I was sitting with Tracy and Colleen and we thank our lucky stars that we had the help we had,” said Joanie.

“Everyone involved was wonderful. Mike (Schmalz) took charge and made sure the girls had room to work. The whole team was just wonderful, awesome,” she said.

She added, “Thank God the defib was in the area.”

And although Tracy had never used a defibrillator before, she had performed CPR at the hospital. She was happy to have her lifelong friend Colleen, who has had experience using the defibrillator in the hospital, beside her.

“When we’re doing this, we’re thinking about his wife beside us and his three children and we thought, ‘We have to get him back; this has to work’, said Collleen.”

“I’m still a bit shaky but feel great that it worked. It (the defibrillator) was there and it worked. We definitely had to have the machine,” added Colleen.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Hockey Player Saved

Trevor Forest suffered a sudden cardiac arrest during a break between hockey scrimmages at the NAIT hockey arena two weeks ago. His quick-thinking teammates resuscitated him with CPR and a public automated external defibrillator, a portable device that sends electric energy to the heart to return the heartbeat to normal.

“These guys are more than my teammates, they’re my buddies,” Forest said at a press conference. “And that night, they became my heroes. Without their quick-thinking response, I would not be here today.”

He credited his longtime friend and teammate Kevin Pollitt for having the training to apply the public defibrillator to save his life.