First Aid Corps

An Arizona man leaves Dallas in good health thanks to the quick actions of a friend, an automated external defibrillator and fast-acting firefighters.

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Roy Tousley collapsed at Galleria Dallas on Oct. 27. In a matter of minutes, his friend had started CPR.

A doctor walking by intervened next and began compressions.

Mall security then arrived and gave him two shocks with an AED, but Tousley was still in danger.

Dallas Fire-Rescue Engine 20 was first on the scene and took over, continuing CPR and using the defibrillator. By the time firefighters got Tousley to Medical City Dallas he was breathing on his own and stable.

“This is an awesome outcome, we’re very happy to see it. We don’t get to see it enough,” said Jay Prigmore the driver, engineer and paramedic for Engine 20.

Tousley and his wife stopped by the fire house on Wednesday to say thank you to rescuers.

“I came to the fire station to give my very best to these gentlemen that saved my life,” said Tousley.

“We need to get defibrillators in every public place that we can,” said Myrna Tousley. “We need everybody to take a CPR course, that’s crucial.”

Janet Nielsen, 63, and her husband were finishing up their shopping and were hungry and tired, so they stopped at a sample table to eat a slice of pizza.

“When I stuck it in my mouth and started chewing, I could feel it slithering down my throat, and it obviously blocked my airway, and that’s when this episode started,” Nielsen said.

Her husband started performing the Heimlich manoeuvre, and then a Costco employee asked him if he needed assistance. That’s when Debbie Osterman, 47, a manager at Costco, entered into the scene.

“You don’t have a chance to think, your body and mind goes into automatic, you don’t think of your training, you don’t think of anything, you just jump in,” Osterman said. She took over the Heimlich, but Nielsen was starting to lose consciousness. “It was almost like a grey thing was coming down, when I was losing consciousness,” Nielsen said.

“I remember feeling my legs sort of going out from under me.”

Laurel Underhill, 44, a nurse at the Grey Nuns Hospital, noticed the crowd of people around Nielsen.

“I thought, there must be a good food sample there,” she said.

When she realized what was going on, she jumped in to help.

By that time, Nielsen said her heart had stopped. Underhill and another nurse started performing CPR, and after a couple of breaths, Nielsen began breathing on her own again. Paramedics arrived about a minute later.

“The next thing that I remember is waking up as they were frantically wheeling me out of Costco on a stretcher,” Nielsen said.

She said the only lasting effects were some “really, really sore ribs,” but that the doctor told her it was a small price to pay for her life.

Underhill and Nielsen met for the first time at the St. John Ambulance awards ceremony. Nielsen told her, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“There’s a bond here that’s never going to go away,” Nielsen said.

Now, every time Nielsen goes to Costco, she and Osterman say hello and hug each other.

Nielsen was the one who nominated Underhill and Osterman, in addition to one other woman who couldn’t attend the event, for the award. She managed to track them down by remembering where they worked.

“I had to find a way to recognize their efforts,” she said. Nielsen described a fourth woman who also helped her. She hasn’t been able to track her down yet.

“She had a little tiny baby in a stroller, and she was the first one to show up,” she said.

A man who went into cardiac arrest while dining at a mall restaurant was saved by quick-thinking bystanders and security guards using a portable defibrillator, officials said Friday.

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The 35 year-old man was eating lunch at the Red Robin restaurant in the Westfield Connecticut Post mall last Saturday when his heart stopped, said Capt. Chris Zak of the Milford Fire Department. When the customer collapsed, restaurant manager Curtis Kilburn called 911 and the mall security office.

Two bystanders began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the man, who had no pulse or heartbeat, Zak said. Jeanne DeMello, a nurse, and Mark Kipstein, an off-duty New York City firefighter, started the chest compressions within moments of the man’s collapse.

Security guards Brian Carlson and Michael Todd used the portable defibrillator to deliver one measured shock that returned the man’s heart to a normal rhythm, Zak said.

Mall spokesman Greg Udchitz said Friday that the mall owns at least two of the units, and the security guards and other Westfield personnel are trained in how to use them as well as in basic first aid and CPR. “It is very rare that we see a medical emergency like this, where we get to use our training,” he said.

Milford Fire Department paramedics arrived within four minutes, Zak said, and provided advanced life support services and oxygen. The man, who was not identified, was transported by ambulance to Milford Hospital.

The malls were filled with holiday shoppers on Black Friday, including someone who was a lifesaver for one lucky shopper.

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17-year-old Sarah Suchower was at Bellevue Square with her aunt Friday when a man collapsed outside Nordstrom and the medical scout raced into action.

“Security started coming up and we yelled for an AED (Automated External Defibrillator) and one was brought over. After doing a series of compressions we realized he still didn’t have a pulse so we hooked up the AED and it shocked him once and we continued to do compressions and that was when the EMTs got there,” says Suchower.

The man was hospitalized but is said to be recovering thanks to the 17-year-old Bonney Lake High junior who wants to be a doctor one day.

The importance of defibrillators in public places was highlighted when a man’s heart was restarted after he collapsed in Haverfordwest last Friday – the first time the town centre’s machine has been used.

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An 80-year-old man suffered a suspected heart attack and stopped breathing outside the Cwm Deri Vineyard shop but thanks to Riverside Shopping Centre worker Mike Davies’ first aid training – and a well placed defibrillator – he made it to hospital alive.

Haverfordwest has a defibrillator, located at Wimpey, provided by the Welsh Assembly, in conjunction with Health Commission Wales and the Welsh Ambulance Service in 2006.

Mike, along with other shop workers were trained in the use of the electric shock machines, often vital to restarting someone’s heart, by the Welsh Ambulance Service.

Time is of the essence for heart attack victims.

Early treatment, like that provided by Mike, who was helped by a retired nurse who was nearby, can mean the difference between life and death.

Mike said the retired nurse began CPR in the vital first minutes while he ran for the defibrillator, which gives you step-by-step instructions and logs vital data which can be used by ambulance and hospital staff.

“Hopefully it will be the last time I’ll use it,” said Mike, who went back to work as usual after the incident.

“It was a case of just do it. It was surreal, yes, but it had to be done. It did take a bit of time to sink in. I put the machine on and let the machine do it. The adrenaline was pumping and you do what you can.”

Riverside Shopping Centre manager Roland Keevil praised Mike’s quick thinking.

“We are very proud of him and delighted that he was able to offer his assistance.”