First Aid Corps

A Maxwell couple got the scare of their lives when their 5-year-old son Blake came into their bedroom in the middle of the night to say he couldn’t breathe.

“In the back of my mind I am thinking that he is going to die and there is nothing I can do about it,” said Blake’s father Jeff Braafhart.

Luckily, Blake’s mother Kristi Braafhart is a nurse at Methodist West Hospital. She had given CPR before, but never to a child, and certainly never her own child.

“He said, ‘You know, mommy and daddy, I can’t breathe.’ So I told Jeff to take him outside. I learned a long time ago with croup, you take them outside into the cold air,” Kristi said.

Jeff explained what happened after that. “I got into the kitchen and right away he started to turn blue. Right away the skin color was going out of him,” Jeff said.

“His heart had stopped and everything,” Kristi said. Jeff told Kristi she should perform CPR on Blake.

“After that I remember checking for a pulse and he didn’t have a pulse, so I started compressions,” Kristi said. “I did about five cycles of compressions and breaths and then he finally took a breath so at that point it was just amazing. Honestly I didn’t think I would bring him back. So I was kind of shocked, and when he took that breath that was the most amazing thing I have ever heard: hearing him take that breath.”

“My mommy is the coolest mommy in the whole world,” Blake said Wednesday afternoon.

The Braafharts would find out later through a series of tests that Blake has a smaller-than-normal airway. And, at the time, Blake had the H1N1 flu virus. It all combined for a very scary night.

“We hope we can teach some parents and others the importance of learning CPR because you never know when you are going to need it,” said Kristi.

15-year old ALISON has little recollection of the days preceding her heart attack. She said she woke up on July 20 feeling her “normal self.” What happened next she does not recall, but, her mother does.

Alison Roney the Survivor

Deborah Roney was in the computer room in her house at about 1:15 p.m. when she heard gagging sounds coming from the kitchen. She called out to her daughter, “Alison, is that you or the dog?”

When she received no response, Deborah Roney made her way into the kitchen. She found Alison on the floor, gasping for breath.

Deborah Roney called on her CPR training and began trying to save her daughter’s life with cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.

Deborah Roney’s 9-1-1 Fairfax County call came in at 1:25 p.m., and an ambulance left the Vienna fire station at 1:26 p.m. It, and a fire truck, pulled up at 1:29 p.m. At 1:30 p.m., EMTs were in the house. Three Vienna police cars responded, as well. When the rescue team arrived, Deborah Roney entrusted Alison’s life to them.

“The real story is that they [the Vienna EMTs] got here so quickly and did such a great job,” said Jack Roney.

Alison was intubated with fluid lines and blood draw lines within minutes. The Roneys later found out that Alison was shocked twice with a defibrillator, once at the house and again in the emergency vehicle.

With IV lines already in-place, Alison spent little time in the emergency room. The treatment Alison got at home and en route saved precious minutes in the emergency room at Inova Fairfax Hospital. She was transported shortly after arrival to her room in the intensive care unit.

A staffer from the emergency room stopped by Alison’s room a day or two later. Jack Roney said the woman seemed to be “in awe” of the care that Alison received by the EMTs.

“It’s not so much about us as it is about the efforts of the fire and rescue service,” said Jack Roney. “Their incredible professionalism saved our daughter’s life.”

Alison Roney spent nine days in ICU, much of the time under sedatives. She recalls very little of her whole experience. Her first ingestible meal, spaghetti, came four days after her heart attack. Her mother said she ate and she remembers that. In the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit, Deborah Roney was called “the mom who saved her daughter’s life.”

Alison Roney left Fairfax Hospital with a defibrillator implant. The life-saving device, known as an ICD, is a small battery-powered electrical impulse generator. When the implanted defibrillator detects arrhythmia, it sends a jolt of electricity to the heart.

“I feel good, normal,” said Alison, a rising sophomore in George C. Marshall High School’s International Baccalaureate program. “Doesn’t seem like any of this happened, except for the scar. I just expect to be alive.”

It’s unusual for a 17-year-old boy to collapse from sudden cardiac arrest, and two in the same hospital at the same time is almost unheard of.

“We were playing games, and I decided I was going to ride a mechanical bull,” recalled Kyle. “I was on it, and I passed out. The next thing I remember is waking up at the hospital.”

Kyle’s mother, Lisa Bednar, was a chaperone at grad night.

“I was the first one on scene. We called for 911, and then there was a group of four of us that started CPR on Kyle, got the defibrillator and shocked him. We continued CPR until the ambulance actually showed up,” Lisa Bednar recalled.

Kyle Bednar the Survivor

A recent stress test that Kyle Bednar took showed he’s in healthy shape. Even though he experienced a close call, he says nothing’s really changed for him.

“It doesn’t even really feel like it ever happened. It’s kind of like life back to normal,” he said.

Kyle says he’s just a little more careful when he’s physically active. In the fall, he’ll be a freshman at North Dakota State University, majoring in mechanical engineering.

Both Ward and Bednar mothers say they have a new mission—making sure every high school is equipped with a defibrillator and people who know how to use them.