First Aid Corps

March 11 started like every other day at Timber Creek High School, with students and staff standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Savannah Vaden the Survivor

“I was in chemistry class, and we stood up to say the pledge.” the Timber Creek High School Sophomore Savannah Vaden recalled.

“She hit the ground, I heard a gasp,” Vaden’s Chemistry teacher, Shelley Hawkins remembered, “so I ran over there saw she was seizing.”

Another student helped Hawkins roll Savannah onto her side, then Hawkins called for the nurse and ran next door to get Mike King, science teacher and girls’ soccer coach.

“I had seen people having seizures before, so I wasn’t too worried about her. I just wanted to keep her safe until help arrived,” King said.

Hawkins took the other students into the next room.

Just after school nurse Thoy Fongsamouth came in, Savannah’s condition worsened.

“All of a sudden the seizures stopped, and she stopped breathing,” King said.

Fongsamouth issued a “code red” via her walkie-talkie and told office staff to call 911.

The code red triggered a team of people into action. King ran for the nearest automatic external defibrillator, or AED, other team members grabbed other AED devices around the school.

Principal Todd Tunnell and Assistant Principal James Johnson arrived as part of the code red team. Tunnell and Johnson stayed in the room while other members waited for emergency personnel or monitored hallways.

Fongsamouth and King hooked Savannah up to the AED and began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

“It was a very sobering feeling hearing the computerized voice on the AED say, ‘Shocking in 3, 2, 1,’” Johnson said.

King said, “It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been a part of.”

“I wanted her to be ok,” Hawkins said, “and I kept just praying ‘let her be ok, let her be ok.’”

Johnson said both King and Fongsamouth kept calm during the crisis.

“To see somebody go into cardiac arrest, and then come back,” Johnson said, “it’s something that sticks with you for life.”

Erin Vaden, Savannah’s mom, arrived at the school just as a fire truck pulled up. A staff member met her at the door and took her to Savannah. She was just in time to see her daughter shocked by the AED.

“No parent should ever have to see that. I almost wish I hadn’t gotten there that quick,” Erin Vaden said. “You want to be there for your child, but you can’t handle seeing it.”

She walked back into the hall because she was so upset. A moment later, she heard that Savannah had a pulse and was breathing on her own and went back into the room.

Paramedics arrived and made sure Savannah’s condition was stable before loading her into the ambulance and taking her to Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth.

Savannah stayed in the hospital for five days. Doctors were able to determine what happened, but not why.

Although she doesn’t remember collapsing, she said she’s thankful she was at school when she did. “If it wouldn’t have happened here, I wouldn’t be here today.” she said.

She now has a permanent defibrillator in her chest that will jolt her heart, if it ever stops again.

Fifteen minutes before dismissal at Bismarck-Henning Junior High School quickly became the longest minutes of Josie Siddens’ life.

Siddens, the nurse for the school district, was returning to her office March 25 when a student came running up, telling her 12-year-old Ashton Norwell was screaming in the gymnasium.

Norwell was being led to Siddens’ office because he felt sick when he began to cry out in pain. But by the time Siddens — who was only seconds from the gymnasium — arrived, the boy was unresponsive and not breathing.

From there, Siddens went into action, moving the boy to the gym floor with the help of a gym teacher while Principal Rusty Campbell called 911. Another gym teacher stepped into the hallway to retrieve an automated external defibrillator hanging on the wall.

“I was looking at (the scene) saying ‘This is not happening here,’” said Siddens, a part-time emergency room nurse at Provena United Samaritans Medical Center. “From there it was just gut reaction.”

Siddens said she used the defibrillator immediately and then began CPR. She repeated the process, but was getting no response from Ashton, who had turned blue.

“I was scared the entire time, but from the second shock on I was saying ‘C’mon, buddy. C’mon, Ashton,’” Siddens recounted.

Suddenly, following the third shock from the defibrillator, Ashton drew a quick gasp of air.

Oxygen provided by Bismarck Community Ambulance helped bring him around and by the time Medix Ambulance personnel arrived, the lifeless boy was cracking jokes at his school nurse.

“There’s never been a better sound in my life than hearing him talk to me,” she said. “It was just fantastic.”

It may have only been a few minutes, but the scene was emotionally draining for Siddens.

“I’m fine during the emergency, I can handle myself well during the emergency,” she said. “But immediately after the emergency, not so well. Lots of people held me up after that.”

Lowell Elementary School Principal Susan Howard, 58, collapsed during a staff meeting Wednesday morning at the Warren Township school.

Susan Howard the Survivor

When colleagues rushed to her side, they found her unresponsive — and could not detect a pulse.

Two teachers, Christy Hartman and Anne McGrath, quickly grabbed one of the school’s portable defibrillator units and applied the training they had received on how to use the device.

Simultaneously, another staff member rushed to call 911.

After receiving the defibrillator’s shock, Howard regained a pulse.

Today, Howard was recuperating at Community Hospital East, where doctors determined that she had suffered a ventricular fibrillation.

“Her cardiologist and the paramedics said if not for the defibrillator and the training of the staff, she would have lost her life,” said Linda Wise, executive secretary at Warren Township Schools’ central office.

The principal’s husband, Mike Howard, had told Wise she could share Howard’s story as a testament to the device’s value.

“We’re all very thankful,” said Jennifer Holdcraft, student dean at Lowell.

The staff learned today that doctors have determined Howard sustained no permanent heart damage from the incident, which occurred at around 8 a.m. Wednesday.

Holdcraft was unsure exactly when Howard would return, but she wouldn’t be surprised to see her soon.

“This is her school, and she loves it dearly,” Holdcraft said.

Virgil Bramblett had just arrived at Hickman High School on Nov. 17 to help repair the school stage. For four hours that morning, the Columbia Public Schools carpenter had felt an uneasy pain in his chest. Muscles near his heart were sore, he thought.

Virgil Bramblett the Survivor

So he walked to the school nurse’s office — on the northeast side of Hickman — a five-minute walk from the school’s main office, where the automatic external defibrillator, or AED, rests.

At about 7:15 a.m. that day, the school’s licensed practical nurse, Cara Baker, had just arrived at work. She led Bramblett to a cot in the nurse’s office. Bramblett asked her to take his blood pressure because of chest pains.

After the blood-pressure reading, Bramblett popped up from the cot, ready to go to work. On his feet, though, he felt dizzy. Seconds later, he was on the cot again, unconscious. Evans and Baker moved him to the floor and began CPR, and Evans shouted at Lisa Chalupny, the office secretary, to call 911.

Do you need the AED?” Chalupny asked, referring to the defibrillator.

“Yes!” Evans replied.

Assistant Principal Tracey Conrad was standing near a stairway in the Hickman Commons when she heard home-school communicator Talisha Payne’s voice on the walkie-talkie asking for the AED.

Conrad sprinted toward the box on the wall containing the defibrillator. School office worker Theodore Hanfelder already had the machine and handed it to Conrad, who dashed to the nurses’ office.

When Conrad reached the office, Evans grabbed the AED as Baker continued CPR.

The AED showed Bramblett’s heartbeat was irregular and that he was having his fifth heart attack. The machine advised Evans to send an electrical shock into him. She pushed the button.

After the AED shock in the nurse’s office, Bramblett seemed to stabilize. The nurses said he even spoke to them.

“I’m so sorry,” he told them. “Thank you so much.”

Evans told him emergency crews were coming. “Oh, I gotta get back to work,” the nurses said he told them.

Bramblett was released from the hospital Nov. 19 and advised to not work for at least a month.

Brenda Bramblett remains anxious about her husband’s health. “It’s just really scary when he leaves the house every day,” she said.

They’re just three big words – Automated Electronic Defibrillator – but for 16-year-old Zachary Harper and his family, they’re words to live by.

Zachary Harper (2nd from left) the Survivor

On an otherwise routine school day last month, Harper, a junior, was minding the school store with a couple of friends when he suddenly grew light-headed.

Seconds after he staggered to teacher Dana Bourassa’s classroom to get a pass for the nurse, it was lights out.

“That’s the last thing I remember,” the slim, black-haired teen said this week at home, where he and his family gathered to piece together the seconds and minutes that, had it not been for nurse Mary Arrowsmith, assistant principal Diane Doran, and teachers Bourassa and Jim St. Onge, would almost certainly have been his last.

Craven said that although Arrowsmith restored Harper’s heartbeat with the AED “in about a minute,” the teen wasn’t yet out of the woods. “He was lost again in the hallway, and there were about four more life-saving maneuvers that were performed on the way to the hospital,” Craven said.

Harper was first rushed to Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua, then flown – in 16 minutes, according to mom Deb Harper, who accompanied him – to Children’s Hospital Boston.

A lot of things went through his head as he lay at Children’s Hospital Boston recovering, Harper said. One vow he made, for instance, was to swear off of junk food forever.

“Well, I guess that’s been broken a little bit since I got home,” he said Monday with a sheepish grin.

Const. Robin Chiasson — a former nurse — responded to a call at James Keating Public School to find school staff attempting CPR to revive the student.

Brandon Koskitalo the Survivor

Vice-principal Sarah Knight said students who had been playing with the boy rushed to the office to alert her after he collapsed.

“I asked the secretary to call 911, grabbed the automated external defibrillator (AED) and headed to the school yard with Shirley Taylor Banks, a board employee who is a registered nurse.

“We were joined by Arlene Spiess, an educational assistant. The officer was there within a minute of us starting procedures and took over.”

She and Const. Peter Hunter, who arrived seconds later, took over administering CPR and Chiasson used the chool’s automated external defibrillator to test the boy’s heart.

The machine indicated she should deliver an electric shock, then resume CPR, which she did, while Hunter assisted with restoring the boy’s breathing.

“As we continued the CPR, I could feel his heart suddenly start pounding and he began breathing,” Chiasson said.

Brandon Koskitalo, 13, was rushed to a hospital in Midland and transferred by air ambulance to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The boy reportedly had a history of cardiac illness.

Knight said yesterday that the student was in stable condition and that his family was with him.

Chiasson — who has three children — said there was “a moment when I envisaged this being my own child . . . you have the will that tells you not to give up; you do what you have to do.”

Chiasson said it was “amazing how the community came together as team. It was the most positive outcome we could hope for.”

Brandon, who underwent surgery to have an internal circadian pacemaker (ICP) placed in his chest in order to prevent a reoccurrence, said the incident let him know how severe his heart condition truly is.

“I hope that they put the AEDs in all the other schools because it can happen to anyone – parents, teachers, students.”

“Words are just not enough…. I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I am only here because (these people) did what they were supposed to do correctly. I am lucky to be here.”

Richmond went to Bon Lin Middle School on Aug. 18 to check out his kids for an orthodontist appointment.

Kenneth Richmond the Survivor

He was chatting with the front office staff at about 3 p.m. and had written his first name on the sign-out sheet when the 41-year-old father collapsed in cardiac arrest.

With ink pen still in hand, Richmond slammed onto the tile floor, landing on his back, unconscious.

Also in the office that afternoon was cardiac nurse Dawn Graves, who was there to check out her son for a medical appointment. If she hadn’t sent him back to his classroom to get his backpack that he forgot, they would have been gone when Richmond collapsed.

“I just heard him hit the floor,” said Graves, a nurse at Methodist North Hospital.

She quickly dropped to his side and rubbed his chest and patted his face. His eyes were open and he was breathing, but he was out of it. He was sweating heavily.

She started performing CPR as an office staff member called 911. Assistant principal Jeremy Yow, also trained in CPR, quickly grabbed the defibrillator the school received last year.

They calmly followed the instructions on the device, alternating between electrical shocks through pads on Richmond’s chest and CPR.

Bartlett Fire paramedics arrived within three minutes and gave Richmond additional shocks on the way to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis.

“I like saying that the Lord put everything in place for me to still be here,” Richmond said Monday, recovering in his Arlington home.

Richmond said he’d been to a heart doctor recently because he was having irregular heartbeats and was scheduled to see a rhythm specialist two days after he collapsed.

“If they didn’t have the AED to shock me, I probably wouldn’t be here,” Richmond said.

Serbrina Richmond, the firefighter’s wife, said she’s grateful that she made that orthodontist appointment for her kids, who usually ride the bus home from school.

Had she not, daughter Kennedy, 13, and son Kenny, 11, would’ve likely found their father passed out.

It was like angels watching over my husband,” she said. “He is a living miracle.”

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Nanette Hagen the Saviour

At about 11:30 a.m. Friday, one of the school’s secretaries notified St. Helens High School principal Nanette Hagen that a man was out in front of the school asking for help for his friend who was having a heart attack. The men had driven up to the school and parked in the fire lane in search of aid.

“I got his feet up here and I was immediately down on my knees. Felt for a pulse and checked for breathing and started chest compressions immediately,” says Hagen.

The high school principal immediately sent a couple of students inside to have someone bring out the school’s automatic defibrillator.

With the help of a fellow staff member, a retired firefighter, they followed the machines directions. When the defibrillator indicated the man needed an electric shock to keep his heart pumping, Hagen didn’t hesitate.

She then continued chest compressions until paramedics arrived.

“At the time, I just responded,” she said.

Hagen’s actions sustained the man’s life long enough for him to get to Good Samaritan Hospital.

“I sure wish I knew what the outcome was,” Hagen said.

Although the administrator shies away from the word hero, she is glad she was able to help the man as best as she could.

“It’s nice to know people think we have trained folks here,” Hagen said.

The school has multiple people trained to do exactly what Hagen did: an emergency response team that includes multiple teachers and classified staff. Glen Boles, a member of the team and a campus monitor, helped Hagen administer the defibrillator.

“We can say we did absolutely everything we could,” Hagen said.

Updates

It would be days before she’d receive confirmation of her success.

A phone call from a family member of the victim brought her to tears.

“She said he made it. He’s still having a little bit of issues, but he made it. I just started crying.”

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Thomas and another student were racing up the school’s front drive about 4:10 p.m during the first day of track practice, when Thomas fell to the pavement.

Eisenhower Middle School Principal Jill Davis, the first to respond, began CPR after she determined that Thomas wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.

Physical education teacher Becky Smith retrieved an automated external defibrillator from the school. Math teacher Dan Schroeder connected Thomas to the AED and administered shock treatments, while Smith and Assistant Principal Christine Riemer assisted Davis with CPR.

Math teacher Dan Schroeder says that voice from the school defibrillator helped him and several others save their student.

“I checked for a pulse and could not find one and then I saw the compression’s were being done from the other teachers.”

P.E. teacher Becky Smith ran the defibrillator outside as other staff members applied CPR and waited for an ambulance.

“When the AED got here, I opened it up, I started to undo the stickiness for the AED and then I put it on his chest.”

Staff used the defibrillator to shock Thomas twice. His pulse returned after he was shocked a third time in an ambulance.

“I’m thankful that we were all there and that we could help this young man and that he’s doing well.”

“It’s an amazing feeling to know that I helped save someone’s life, especially a young student,” says Ty-Ray’s track coach Chana Hinkston.

Paramedics were able to re-establish a heart rhythm with Thomas in the ambulance en route to the hospital.

Ty-Ray is currently recovering at Rockford Memorial Hospital.

Ty-Ray’s dad, Steve Thomas, says the family didn’t know his son had a heart condition before he collapsed on Wednesday. But now he’s on the road to recovery.

My other son is up there got him doing leg exercises right now, so we can get him stronger, he’s standing, sitting on a chair right now , it’s a blessing.”

“If they didn’t go through that training there’s no telling what would have happened, if they weren’t there at the right time, he’d be lost, I mean he would have been gone.”

Update 16th May 2009

“I’m just thankful to be here,” Ty-Ray said Thursday.

He and his mom, Marlo Thomas, agree that Ty-Ray is a lucky kid.

“God put everybody in the place they were supposed to be,” Marlo said. “Because if they weren’t, who knows what would have happened. It wasn’t his time yet.”

He still might play basketball in the future, but for now he’s taking things slow.

“I’m just thankful to be here and thankful that God touched me,” he said.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Jim McCallister, a retired grocery store owner and pillar of the Babson Park community, was attending the annual “Breakfast With Santa” event at the Dale R. Fair Babson Park Elementary School with his great-granddaughter when he collapsed Saturday morning. 

When McCallister collapsed, Assistant Principal Elizabeth Tyler rushed to the cabinet where the defibrillator was stored.

She said two parents attending the event – Cori Rowles, who is a nurse, and Alan Skipper, a retired Polk County Sheriff’s Office employee – began CPR.

While Tyler has been trained in using the defibrillator, she turned it over to Rowles who has more experience.

Henson said McCallister responded and later apologized for creating a scene.

“I’ve never been more thankful for a piece of equipment,” Principal Ken Henson said.

“When we went through the training, we didn’t want to use it,” Henson said. “I was very thankful to have the automatic defibrillator.”