First Aid Corps

Six women entered the pool for the women’s 100 yard breaststroke at the Florida Senior Games.

Sylvia Eisele the Survivor

Their ages ranged from 75 to 86.

As two other swimmers who were not competing in the race watched from behind the starting block, their eyes locked on one of the competitors who gracefully swam from wall to wall.

“Look at lane 5,” one of them said. “Such a smooth stroke.”

Indeed, lane 5 was full of grace as Sylvia Eisele — who nearly died during a race two years ago — embarked on a memorable day.

In addition to her aquatic elegance, Eisele did make a really big splash on Saturday at Gandy Pool in Lakeland.

Following a two-year absence from competitive swimming, the 82-year-old from the Cypress Lake section of Fort Myers returned to the water in record-setting fashion.

As her husband, Nicholas, watched from the sidelines, Eisele competed in three races and set Florida Senior Games age group records in every one.

“It’s been a great day for her,” Nicholas proudly stated.

“I enjoy the water. I love the water,” Eisele said. “I should have been a fish, not a human being.”

For the past two years, Eisele was a fish out of water.

Two years ago, swimming and everything else in her life came to a sudden halt. Near the end of a long day at a Canadian national competition in Toronto — close to the couple’s home in Mississauga — Eisele suffered a heart incident during a race.

“Two arm lengths from the wall, I felt a pain in my head and I was gone,” she recalled. “I was sinking.”

“Her heart stopped,” said Nicholas.

After being pulled out of the water, lifeguards quickly went to work. One provided mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while the other grabbed a defibrillator.

“I was dead on the deck,” Eisele said. “They had to get a defibrillator to get my heart going.”

The prompt response saved Eisele’s life.

“We were so lucky that there was such good medical help available,” Nicholas said.

Her recuperation in a hospital lasted nine days.

Her absence from competitive swimming lasted two years.

“It’s been rough on her because she’s been a competitor all her life,” Nicholas said.

Before she arrived in North America more than a half-century ago, Eisele was an elite swimmer in her native Austria.

The competitive juices that flowed back then — be it in swimming, tennis, cycling or downhill skiing — are still present today in the pool.

“I like competition. I’m a very competitive person,” she said.

Eisele has been a fixture in the local swim scene since she and her husband moved to Fort Myers 25 years ago. She is a longtime member of the Swim Florida club program run by Mac Kennedy. Eisele still practices right next to the program’s young swimmers.

“Mac gives me a lane. He treats me very nicely,” she said.

Eisele, who has competed around the globe — from Australia to Brazil to Germany to New Zealand and has held world records in masters swimming — showed no signs of rust as she returned to the lanes for competition on Saturday.

Accompanied by a device that is implanted near her collarbone in order to make sure her heart beats the way it’s supposed to, Eisele set new age group records for the women’s 80-84 division in the 100 yard breastroke (2:02), 100 yard individual medley (2:02) and 50-yard breastroke (:53.50).

“She swims the 50 faster than I can walk it,” said Nicholas, 85.

On this day, the records didn’t carry quite as much significance for Eisele. Simply being back in the pool for competitive races was enough of a reward.

“I like to be active,” she said. “I like to do things to stay healthy, mentally and physically, that’s the key.”

Crawford Best, 72, a professional bassoonist, lifelong runner and peak-bagger, survived an unexpected heart attack that struck while he was in the Glenwood Hot Springs Pool, thanks to quick work by pool lifeguards with CPR and a defibrillator, followed by expert care at Valley View and St. Mary’s hospitals.

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“All those people saved my life. There are no two ways about it,” the Santa Fe, N.M., man said Friday, after taking his daily post-operative half-mile walk as he recuperates at his son’s home in Denver.

Luke Johnson, Brianne Jones, Alicia Whiteside & Travis Newcomb the Saviours

“To me it was truly amazing that I was so lucky, because 99 percent of the time I am not in those circumstances, and I couldn’t have gotten that help. If I’d been driving, or on Quandary Peak, I wouldn’t have made it,” he said.

As it was, Best and his friend Carole Whitney of Denver were wading through the Hot Springs Pool after swimming laps, shortly after 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 29.

“My vision was funny, and Carole says I said something, and then I don’t remember anything until I was being helped onto the gurney and being wheeled into the ambulance,” he recalled.

In between were several tense minutes when no one knew what the outcome might be.

Whitney said Best went underwater, and at first she thought he was clearing his ears.

“But when my internal alarm sounded, I pulled him up and he was unconscious,” she recalled in an email sent to friends and family.

Whitney cried for help, and the pool’s lifeguards kicked into gear, recalled Travis Newcomb, assistant pool manager.

“Ali jumped in and made the rescue. She pulled him out, and we activated our emergency plan,” Newcomb said, referring to lifeguard Alicia Whiteside. “All the lifeguards went into action.”

While lifeguard Luke Johnson called 911, Newcomb grabbed the pool’s automated external defibrillator (AED) and ran to the lodge side of the pool. By the time he got there, lifeguard Brianne Jones was already performing rescue breathing on Best. A doctor who was at the pool at the time performed the chest compressions, and a nurse assisted.

“They went through a cycle of CPR, and then we made sure everything was dry and ready, and got the AED hooked up,” Newcomb said. Best had a pulse, but it was wildly irregular — just the circumstance the AED is made for. The team applied the shock treatment twice and the device successfully corrected Best’s heart rhythm.

“He took some breaths, he became conscious, and pretty soon he could answer questions correctly,” Newcomb said. Best actually sat up while the Glenwood Springs Fire Department’s emergency medical technicians were rolling in the gurney.

By this time, all eyes at the pool were on the dramatic life-and-death action.

“We were trying to block the scene, but it’s pretty out in the open,” Newcomb said. “Everybody could see what was happening. When he came to and was wide awake, then everybody clapped.

“It was pretty incredible to see, somebody who passed away, and he came back to life in front of us,” Newcomb added.

This was his second time to use the AED in a real-life situation, and it has worked both times, Newcomb said.

Best was out of the pool and breathing, but he was still in plenty of hot water.

Once he arrived at the Valley View Hospital emergency room, Dr. Steven Heilbrunn’s angiogram revealed that two of Best’s four main heart arteries were 99 percent blocked, while the other two were 60 to 70 percent blocked.

This was stunning news regarding a man who routinely runs three miles and does 50 to 70 push-ups and sit-ups a day, climbed a 14er this summer, has a low resting pulse and low blood pressure, and was pronounced by his doctor earlier this year as “one of the healthiest people in my practice.”

The blockage was so extreme, Whitney said, that Heilbrunn and his team elected to airlift Best to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction rather than risk the extra time and elevation gain of a flight to Denver.

“By 8:30 p.m. he was on the helicopter, and he went into surgery at 11 p.m.,” Whitney said.

The quadruple bypass surgery took four and a half hours.

After getting a call, Best’s son, Dr. Alan Best, a neuroradiologist, and daughter-in-law, Dr. Flora Waples, an emergency room doctor, drove over from their home in Denver, met up with Whitney in Glenwood Springs, and continued west to Grand Junction.

“At 9:30 the next morning, we were in his room talking to him,” Whitney said. “He was sitting up and we were having an alert and interesting conversation.”

Best spent two days in intensive care at St. Mary’s, and was discharged on Wednesday. He plans to spend the rest of November recuperating at his son’s home in Denver.

Emergency responders saved the life of a man who went into cardiac arrest on Sunday while working out in the gym of the Nassau County Aquatic Center in East Meadow, officials say.

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According to East Meadow Fire Department Chief Carl Pugliese, the call came in just before 10 a.m.

“We were alerted that there was an unresponsive man at the Aquatic Center gym,” Pugliese said. “Probably about half way there, the dispatcher called me back and said that the lifeguard said that they were in the process of doing CPR.”

Lifeguards from the facility used an external defibrillator and began resuscitation efforts until the East Meadow Fire Department arrived. Once on scene, the rescue crew, led by Lt. Giovanni Bautista, took over and they were able to restart the man’s heart and breathing.

“By the time they got him to an ambulance, the gentleman regained his heartbeat,” Pugliese said. “He was actually breathing on his own with oxygen.”

The 66 year-old man, who was not identified, was taken via Ambulance to Nassau University Medical Center. He has since been moved to the Cardiac Care Unit. He is expected to remain in the hospital for “a week or two,” according to Pugliese, but doctors expect the man to make a full recovery.

The doctor congratulated the rescue team for their quick response and expedient efforts.

“He thinks that the quick intervention actually saved the gentleman’s life,” Pugliese said.

Langley electrician Lorne Dufour’s heart had stopped and he’d lost control of his truck on July 16. His red pickup truck after it hit a power pole and slammed into a retaining wall at Victoria Drive.

Marc Alfonso the Saviour

He was in cardiac arrest when Marc Alfonso, 29 grabbed his $2,300 first-aid kit from his car and found Girard-Lau doing chest compressions on Dufour.

While lifeguard Girard-Lau worked pumping Dufour’s chest, Alfonso put a tube into his mouth, meant to keep the tongue off the back of the mouth so the airway stayed open.

He grabbed his bag-valve mask that was attached to an oxygen tank and put it over Dufour’s face and ventilated him by squeezing the mask, distributing pure oxygen into his lungs.

A minute later, Alfonso grabbed his $1,700 defibrillator and shocked the 45-year-old’s heart.

Dufour, who is still recovering from the life-threatening heart trouble, knows how unbelievably lucky he was that day.

“My friends say, ‘Buy a lottery ticket,’” Dufour said Wednesday. “I tell them I’ve already won.”

He also realizes that “thank you” is about all he can say.

“What do you want me to say?” he chuckled. “He’s a good guy. He saved my life.”

In 2008, after Alfonso’s best friend, Andrew Dolsji, died in a car accident, he swore to himself that he would never be without the training and equipment required to make a difference to someone’s life.

He took countless hours of medical training. He purchased a state-of-the-art first-aid kit that includes the battery-powered defibrillator — and it’s always in his car.

Alfonso sees himself as part of a big team that saved Dufour.

“There were the paramedics . . . a team of doctors, a team of nurses, a team of recovery specialists, everyone contributed to it,” he said.

James Flippin is one of the most active 72-year-olds you’d ever meet. The walls of his home are similar to the hall of fame, covered with awards from the 71 marathons he’s run.

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He has remained fit all of his life, so it came as a surprise last week when he had a heart attack during his daily swim at the Northwest Family YMCA.

“When I would swim, I would be a little short of breath for about 10 minutes, but then it would correct itself,” Flippin said. “But on Nov. 15, after 10 minutes, that’s when I had my heart attack instead.”

James Flippin the Survivor

Linda Crabtree was the only lifeguard on duty at the time, and immediately called for help on her radio. With her quick reaction and the help of Melissa Betts and Elizabeth Janda, the three were able to pull Flippin out of the water.

“He’s 6 feet 4; I couldn’t keep him all the way out,” Crabtree said. “I kept his head out until the other two ladies came to help. Two of us pulled and one of us pushed.”

Once they got him on the pool deck, the three used the automated defibrillator to shock him back to life before the paramedics arrived.

Flippin’s daughter Lucy Johnston spoke of how stunned the doctors were that the women were able to save him: “They were in shock. They were walking around showing each other the papers from the defibrillator, and saying ‘I can’t believe this, he’s so lucky, you’ve got to thank whoever helped him’.”

“It’s great that it had that kind of an outcome, but I just feel like there were guardian angels all over,” Crabtree said.

To Flippin’s family, the real guardian angels are the women who saved his life.

“They’re angels. They were there at the perfect time to help our family,” Flippin’s wife Paula said. “There could not have been more perfect timing.”

Now, Flippin can run a few more marathons, adding to his massive wall collection. But most importantly, he can spend another Thanksgiving with his family.

“You can’t be more thankful than that, when you think there would’ve been an empty seat at the table. And now there’s not going to be one, thanks to those three women,” Paula added.

“It’s a true miracle, that’s the word for my dad. He’s a walking miracle,” Johnston said.

“I’m just grateful to be alive,” Flippin said.