First Aid Corps

Janyne Durrant-Pratt, who collapsed as she went to pick up her eight-year-old daughter Lucie, described teacher David Board as one of her heroes – and both of them said what happened highlights the importance of having defibrillators in public places and of people learning basic lifesaving skills.

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Her family – which also includes her husband Martin and their eldest daughter Sophie, 14 – live next door to Frettenham Primary Partnership School, and on November 10 last year before she could reach the school gates Mrs Durrant-Pratt suffered a cardiac arrest.

Janyne Durrant-Pratt the Survivor

Everyone rallied around to help her. Parent Bill Sainsbury-Logan started CPR before Mr Board took over and in the vital minutes before an ambulance arrived used the school’s defibrillator to shock Mrs Durrant-Pratt, 39, and help her heart’s rhythm return to normal. Mrs Durrant-Pratt spent three weeks in the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and is still recovering. She is deeply grateful to Mr Board and everybody who helped her.

She said: “I am very thankful to each and every person who was there. If it had not been for them and the school’s defibrillator who knows what would have happened.

“David has always been on a pedestal as far as being a teacher goes because he has a fantastic ability with the children. What he did on November 10 proved to me that he really is a hero. David will always be someone that is very special to me. I cannot thank him enough for what he did for me.”

Mr Board said: “I am just an ordinary person who has had the correct training so if I can do it other people can too.

“All schools should have defibrillators because they could mean the difference between life and death.”

He stressed lots of people helped after Mrs Durrant-Pratt collapsed.

As Emilie Bioty’s boyfriend drove her to her Vandercook Lake home in August, she collapsed in the front passenger seat.

Emilie Bioty (right) the Survivor

Boyfriend Dalton Smaga made it into her driveway and ran into the house to alert Bioty’s parents, Alecia and Tom Bioty.

They performed CPR until paramedics arrived.

“They didn’t think she was going to make it,” Tom Bioty said. “We thought we had lost our baby.”

The 17-year-old survived, but she was an exception. She suffered from cardiac arrest, which kills more than 90 percent of its victims.

The Bioty family now encourage people to get trained in CPR, and Alecia Bioty says it should be taught in health classes at schools.

“You may never have to use it, but if you do need it, it’s there,” she said.

Emilie Bioty later was diagnosed with Long QT syndrome, a disorder that can cause a person to develop a dangerous heart rhythm called an arrhythmia. Now she takes medication and has a pacemaker and defibrillator.

After her near-death experience, Emilie Bioty stopped worrying about the small things and what people think about her, she said. She is a junior at Vandercook Lake High School.

“I have the support of my family, and we are dealing with what we think is our new normal,” she said.