First Aid Corps

A lifeguard rescued a young boy at an Anne Arundel County pool Saturday.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

The boy’s body was found laying at the deep end of the Waugh Chapel Swim Club in Gambrills. The lifeguard saw him, pulled him from the water, and began CPR. A defibrillator was also used during the rescue.

The boy was breathing and conscious when he was airlifted to Johns Hopkins Hospital.

According to the Connor Cares Foundation , the defibrillator used during Saturday’s rescue was the first one it ever donated. The foundation was created in 2006 after 5-year-old Conner Freed drowned underneath an empty lifeguard chair at a country club pool.

Since then, the group has donated defibrillators throughout Anne Arundel, Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties.

Updates

Monique Ward’s 8-year-old son, Ervin, is recovering at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. He was at a birthday party Saturday at the Waugh Chapel Swim Club in Gambrills when bystanders said he was near the slides in the deep end and went under. Ervin said he remembers very little.

“Water was getting into my mouth, and I kept trying to go over there, and I sank back down,” the boy told 11 News.

His mother said a lot of what happened is still vague, but she recalled standing around the pool talking with other parents when someone screamed that a child was in distress.

“I turned. A child had fallen into the water, so I ran over to where the child had fallen in and saw that it was my child that went into the water, which immediately put me into a state of panic,” Ward said.

“There was a lifeguard that was carrying a little boy. He was lifeless. He was just in bad shape,” witness Amy Davis said.

The swim club’s president said Ervin had no pulse and was not breathing, but a 20-year-old lifeguard named Mark and another woman training to be an EMT gave him CPR.

They also hooked him up to the automated external defibrillators. The machine indicated he didn’t need to be shocked and that he was alive.

Colton Boechler looks like many kids his age. The red-headed 11-year-old wears a black hoodie, skate shoes with bright blue laces and has a retainer. But a glimpse under his sweatshirt reveals a large white bandage over the left side of his chest as he arrives in the playroom at the B.C. Children’s Hospital with a pulse oximeter hooked up to his finger.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

Last Saturday, Colton was swimming at the University of B.C. Aquatic Centre when he went into cardiac arrest. Two quick-thinking lifeguards, Jane Bellett and Aaron Stryd, began performing two-person CPR after Bellett used an automatic external defibrillator (AED). Colton survived, and five days later, on Thursday at 7:45 a.m., he had a tiny defibrillator surgically implanted in his heart to prevent the same thing from happening again.

Asked how he was feeling just hours after the surgery, Colton responded like a typical kid: “Um, good.”

He was tired but grateful.

“I just want to say thank you Aaron and Jane for saving my life,” he said. “And the rest of the hospital.”

“There’s a good possibility we’ll be going home tomorrow,” said Colton’s dad, Kelly Boechler. “We’re optimistic. The surgery went well this morning. He’s recovering, as always, better than expected,” the father said, thanking in particular cardiologists Dr. Derek Human and Dr. Sanjiv Gandhi — who performed Thursday’s operation — and pediatric respirologist Dr. Michael Seear.

Colton’s is a familiar face around the hospital. He’s been a volunteer there since doctors there saved his life — the first time.

In 2007, he had the flu and the virus attacked his heart. He went into cardiac arrest, and then his lungs failed. He spent 100 days in B.C. Children’s Hospital. His recovery was hailed as a miracle, but the incident left him with an arrhythmia caused by the scar tissue on his heart. He didn’t know it, but he was at risk for another heart attack.

It happened after jumping off the three-metre high dive at the UBC pool. “I was doing a 360 spin. But then I came over to the edge and I was waving to my mom,” Colton said. He doesn’t remember sinking, his panicked mom pulling him out, or the lifeguards stepping in to re-start his heart. His mother Julie does.

“I just want to thank them for the love that they gave me and the support they gave me. [Bellett] put her arms around me and said she was there for me, she loved me and would look after me,” she said.

Because of the lifeguards’ quick response and the accessible AED, there’s been no loss of heart function and Colton’s CT and MRI scans have so far come back normal. He’s been eating a little, and went for a short walk in the hospital.

And now, with the built-in defibrillator, another heart arrhythmia should correct itself immediately.

“Obviously we were not expecting this in any way, shape or form. So to have the defibrillator in the pool was just an amazing thing. If this were to happen, it’s best for it to happen in a place like that because it got immediate attention,” said Colton’s dad.

“Obviously they did a great job because the outcome was fantastic. We couldn’t ask for a better outcome.”

A former college football player, Stephen Slocum, 50, liked to push himself. It worked in business, allowing him to become the owner of a successful Nationwide Insurance office in Salisbury.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

And it worked in the gym: He was a regular at the Mid-Shore YMCA, keeping himself as fit as when he played football in his college days. Cardiac stress tests were no challenge for him.

But one day at the gym, something went wrong.

“I noticed I didn’t have the same ‘punch’ I normally do,” Slocum said. “I got dizzy and thought I better get myself checked out.”

Slocum went to PRMC’s Emergency Department, where tests all seemed normal — except for the EKG. Just 45 minutes later, he already had a stent in place to fix an obstructed right coronary artery.

“I couldn’t believe how quick it was,” he said.

And he felt better almost immediately — so good, in fact, that he was soon back at the Y for his workout routine. Two weeks after the first incident, Slocum was exercising in the weight room when he was felled by a major heart attack due to a blood clot.

An off-duty detective sergeant from the Wicomico Sheriff’s Office, Michael Dolch, happened to be at the Y that day and helped revive Slocum.

“I just had walked in to work out, and some people told me there was a man having a seizure,” Dolch said. “I went to see if I could help, and when I went to take his vital signs, he stopped breathing.”

Dolch had been trained for CPR, but never had used it — now, his practice paid off. He and another bystander, an off-duty officer from Eastern Correctional Institution, kept Slocum’s heart pumping and airways circulating.

“When I went into the room and saw who was working on him, I knew these were two people who had been highly trained and I felt really good about his chances,” said Nora Mears, a longtime aquatics instructor at the YMCA.

Mears added her experience to boost Slocum’s chances — not only is she a lifeguard, but she also teaches lifeguard classes at the Y that include CPR and AED usage.

By another stroke of luck, Slocum’s good friend, Dr. Jeffrey H. Etherton of Delmarva Heart had donated a defibrillator to the Mid-Shore YMCA 10 years ago, to use in situations such as this one. Mears helped shock Slocum’s heart back into rhythm — it took three shocks.

Etherton, a YMCA board member, said he and his wife, Michele, decided to donate the AED after a fellow board member and philanthropist Herbert Fincher was felled by sudden cardiac death at the gym.

“A wonderful guy had died, and it struck me that something could have been done about it,” Etherton said. “About a month later, my wife and I donated the defibrillator.” Since then, the YMCA’s defibrillator has been used twice — Mears had been helping the first time, too. Both times, the AED helped save lives.

The Ethertons’ donation came well ahead of a growing national trend to install AEDs in public areas, from airports to malls. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute said 95 percent of people who have sudden cardiac arrest die from it if they are not rapidly treated with an AED.

It made the difference for Stephen Slocum.

On his 50th birthday, Nov. 27, 2011, Slocum was released from the hospital, just weeks after a heart attack that many could not have survived.

Today, he is back to work, and back to working out, too — although now it’s at Peninsula Regional’s cardiac rehab facility, where his heart is monitored while he exercises.

Even though Slocum’s heart attack happened at the gym, he is still a strong believer in exercise.

“I don’t think I would have been able to recover as quickly — maybe even wouldn’t have survived — if I wasn’t so fit,” he said.

It’s likely that family history played a role in his heart disease. Slocum said many people in his family, including his father, had cardiac problems. Exercise is a vital way to ensure that his heart recovers and stays healthy.

Slocum is grateful to all who helped him that day.

“I am a man of faith, and I believe that it was by God’s grace that all the proper people were lined up to keep me alive,” Slocum said.

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.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

“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.