First Aid Corps

Shortly after 10 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 24, Rothenberg began feeling faint while playing tennis with his friends at the Mercer Island Country Club.

Eric Rothenberg (centre) the Survivor

Not knowing what was wrong, the 42-year-old got down onto his knees. And then he collapsed.

Rothenberg’s tennis partners immediately yelled for someone to call 911.

Within seconds, two MICC members, both of whom happened to be doctors, were at Rothenberg’s side administering CPR. Minutes later, they were using the MICC defibrillator to jump-start the man’s heart.

The EMT team had yet to arrive. When they did, Rothenberg’s pulse was already beating again.

Rothenberg, who is feeling healthy and active today, only a week after the cardiac arrest, said his rescue was a miracle.

“The fact that those two doctors were there, and the defibrillator, are the reasons I survived. If I had been anywhere else, it would have been too late,” Rothenberg said.

Dr. Alan Geltzer, one of the two doctors to respond to Rothenberg, agreed.

“There were a lot of things that came together to save his life. There were lots of people around, and those involved were able to jump on things and get things going,” Geltzer said, adding that the fact that MICC had a defibrillator was essential. “There’s no question, the defibrillator and CPR kept Eric alive. It’s tremendous that the Country Club has one.”

It took Bellevue paramedics nearly 10 minutes to arrive at the South-end Country Club with an ambulance. Geltzer and Dr. Niraj Patel were administering CPR to Rothenberg within seconds.

A few days after the emergency, Rothenberg was back at home with his two sons and wife, Edith. He suffered no brain damage and now carries an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) near his heart to detect any further episodes of cardiac arrhythmia.

“It’s hard to articulate. It makes me not only appreciate the people who were there to help, but the Mercer Island community. Even people I don’t know have offered their support and prayers,” Rothenberg said. “It’s like looking at my kids and my family, and having a greater appreciation for life.”

Patti Davis works at the Fort Wayne Community Center.

Patti Davis (left) the Saviour

The gentleman was playing cards at the center when he went into cardiac arrest.

Patti and the other staff members quickly responded to his aid, using an Automatic External Defibrillator to restart his heart.

“I don’t think you think when you do it. You just go and follow and remember your training that we all get here at the Community Center,” said Davis. “You just go through it and hope for the best, and it was the best this time.”

With Patti’s initial response and paramedics’ expertise, it took only seven minutes to get the man breathing again on his own.

On July 30, Ted Seaman slumped to the floor of the Cheltenham squash court after suffering a massive heart attack.

Ross, 32, says he got the fright of his life when Ted had his heart attack.

He said: “His face was deep purple and Ted started to stumble backwards.”

“I grabbed hold of him and lowered him to the floor but the rest of him was deathly white.”

“I used to be a lifeguard but I haven’t done any training for years so I thought the best thing to do was make sure someone was on their way. I shouted for an ambulance to be called and then I screamed for someone who knew first aid.”

“I knew I had to do something so I turned him on his back.”

Fortunately, fellow club-member Dr Robinson was in the building and came running over.

Working as a team, he and Ross gave him mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions, before the doctor used the defibrillator.

Oil company worker Ross, who lives in Clarence Square, said: “It all happened within a few minutes, but it seemed like half an hour.”

“I was just willing him to stay alive. It really hit me when I got home how close he was to dying. I’m just so glad he made it through.”

He was rushed to Cheltenham General Hospital before being transferred to the heart unit at Bristol Royal.

Had the machine not been available, vital seconds would have been lost before paramedics arrived and Ted would have died.

He said: “The first thing I knew about it was when I woke up in hospital and there were doctors all around me.”

“I hadn’t felt any pain or dizzyness beforehand so there were no warning signs. I just collapsed and that was it.”

“I had a very sore chest afterwards, but I put that down to the 16-stone man I’d just beaten at squash pushing on my chest!”

“I wouldn’t be here if that piece of equipment wasn’t there and Ross hadn’t reacted the way he did. I owe him a big thank you.”

Ted, from Churchill Drive, Charlton Kings, regularly played squash and considered himself fit before he collapsed.

Di Pierce, the manager of the East Glos Club, in Old Bath Road, said: “Thankfully the defibrillator was here to help. It’s something we’ve had for four years after being persuaded by the ambulance service it would be a sensible idea.”

A Great Western Ambulance spokesman said: “I’m delighted to hear Mr Seaman continues to make a good recovery. Our paramedics who arrived on scene believe that the excellent quality CPR given to him in the first crucial minutes before they arrived saved his life.”

Ester Marsh, associate executive director of the Salisbury Y, was working outside on some back fields when her radio said the staff was needed for an emergency in the gymnasium.

19-year-old Travis Correll was lying on his side.

Someone already had called 911, and Executive Director Sandy Flowers had arrived with “the suitcase,” which contains the AED, oxygen and other first-aid items.

“I wasn’t happy with the way he was,” Marsh recalled Saturday. She used what she called a judo technique to turn the 6-4, 250-pound Correll onto his back.

She realized there was no pulse and no rising and falling of his chest — he wasn’t breathing.

Marsh started CPR compressions — 30 pushes and two breaths per cycle — while John Peterson prepared the oxygen and Randa and Barbara Franklin readied the AED.

“We all really meshed together,” Marsh said.

The staff communicated without words. Marsh was thinking Correll’s shirt should come off, and Peterson was already cutting it with scissors. She completed the job by just ripping it open.

With the AED pads attached, the words “shock advised” only confirmed what the Y staff knew: Correll was in trouble.

This was the moment of truth they had all trained for.

The group around Correll made sure they were clear, and Mary Jane Randa pushed the button.

Correll’s body jerked from the electric jolt.

The AED’s next words were just as urgent: “Continue CPR.”

After the first shock, Marsh went back to CPR, seemingly pounding on Correll’s chest.

As Marsh was ending her fourth cycle of compressions and breaths, an emergency responder took over and EMS attached its own AED to the Y’s setup.

Again, a shock was advised. After the second jolt, Correll’s heartbeat and breathing returned, and once that happened, EMS wanted to transport as soon as possible.

Travis said he wasn’t fully aware of where he was and what happened to him until three days after he collapsed. By then he was on the cardiac floor at Presbyterian and cognizant that he didn’t really like the food.

Correll said he felt tired that day after playing basketball and told someone he was going to sit down on the bleachers.

“And that’s the last I remember,” he said.

Eight days after his heart stopped, he had his new defibrillator and was going home. Travis walked out on his own, refusing a wheelchair.

When he entered the car to go home, his mother, Wilhemina Lowry, broke down in tears of thankfulness.

“That was the roughest part,” Travis said.

The story of the former Jordan volunteer firefighter and pilot started more than a year ago when he took up running to keep in shape.

Kelvin Williamson the Survivor

Winter came, pushing his training indoors. Williamson got a membership at the St. Catharines YMCA to help keep him in shape until the spring when he could get outside again.

By May, Williamson was once again running on Jordan’s quiet, secluded back roads. By June 10, Williamson realized he missed his training regimen at the gym and joined again the next day.

After his usual 10-minute warm-up jog, Williamson sidled up to a stationary bike, hopped on and started pedalling.

Moments later, Williamson blacked out and stopped breathing.

“I had no warning, no symptoms. I just fell into the guy next to me,” Williamson said.

For the next six minutes, as he lay on the floor, three Y employees raced to save him.

Duty manager Angela Barney, Sally Jane Southern- Grice and Jill Huntley, with a defibrillator in hand that she had been trained to use only two days earlier, administered CPR, did chest compressions and used the machine to shock Williamson’s heart back into action.

After 260 consecutive compressions on Williamson’s large chest — Southern-Grice did 100, Huntley 160 — life returned to Williamson.

“It was amazing feeling your breath coming back on my hand. It really was,” Huntley told Williamson Wednesday.

With his heart beating again, Williamson was whisked to hospital. He woke up after three hours, with a sore chest and feeling like he had just had “a really good nap.”

Days later, the father of three was undergoing quintuple bypass surgery, after it was determined his heart attack had been caused by blocked arteries.

“You realize how much there is to live for,” he said about his ordeal.

“I have a wife and three beautiful kids I’m now going to see get married and hopefully have grandchildren.”

On Wednesday, he and his wife, Judy, returned to the Y to say thank you to the women who saved him. He gave each a token of thanks — a hug and an angel figurine holding a heart.

Despite her quick comeback, Southern-Grice said the whole experience was overwhelming. “I’m just overwhelmed — overwhelmed then and overwhelmed now,” she said.

“I feel relief to see him happy and healthy,” Barney added.

Barney, Southern-Grice and Huntley deserve credit, Williamson said.

“So does the Y for having the training and having the budget for a defibrillator.”, he said.

Smith, manager of the north Arlington center, was in her office June 27 when another employee said someone had fallen off the bleachers during an indoor soccer game.

Ernie Smith the Saviour

Smith, thinking that a child had fallen while playing, realized that the situation was far more serious when a woman yelled, “Who knows CPR?”

John D. Lukin III, 62, was watching his nephew play and had gone into cardiac arrest.

“He had no pulse. He wasn’t breathing,” said Smith, 41.

Smith immediately began cardiopulmonary resuscitation and twice used the center’s automated external defibrillator to restart Lukin’s heart until emergency medical crews arrived.

Smith, a CPR instructor for a decade, said she had to tune out voices from the crowd saying she didn’t know what she was doing.

“This is what I was trained to do,” Smith said. “His life was more important.”

Lukin was taken to Texas Health Arlington hospital and was released two days later.

On Thursday, Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck presented Smith with an award for her actions and said Lufkin’s recovery is the perfect example of the importance of knowing basic lifesaving skills.

“Everybody should know the basics of lifesaving. Bystander CPR is how we can save lives. Ambulances can’t get there fast enough,” said Cluck, a physician.

The Bartlett Recreation Center member, who was not immediately identified, collapsed while shooting hoops on the center’s basketball court about 7:45 a.m.

When employees realized the man had no pulse and was turning blue, they retrieved the defibrillator, while other staff members called emergency personnel.

The device was at the front desk near the court.

Chris Hartman, member services manager, administered the shock.

“One shock and he came back,” said Tawny Walker, the center’s facility manager.

Paramedics arrived within minutes, and the man was taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis, where he reportedly was recovering Monday afternoon.

“It made a critical difference,” Asst. Fire Chief Danny Baxter said of the rec center employees’ reaction. “At the very least, it got his heart back pumping where there was not any other damage.”

“We’ve always had it available, but we’ve never had to use it,” she said. “So the first time was a success story and not a tragic one.”

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

The 19-year-old man had been playing basketball before collapsing around 12:45 p.m. in the YMCA gym.

Jamie Morgan, chief executive officer of the Rowan County YMCA, said staff members used a YMCA-owned defibrillator to get the man’s heart beating again.

“There were multiple staff members that responded,” he said. “It was unfortunate that it happened, but I’m very proud of the way the staff responded. They responded very quickly and the way they have been trained to.”

Salisbury Fire Capt. Tim Hurlocker said the man’s heart was beating but he required mechanical assistance to breathe when firefighters helped Rowan EMS workers load him into an ambulance.

The man was initially taken to Rowan Regional Medical Center and later to Presbyterian. Morgan said doctors there were performing tests to determine why he had a heart attack.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the young man and his family,” he said.

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

Oregon State University’s Dixon Recreation Center manager Miles Dodge, a 21-year-old senior, was in the lobby area Wednesday morning when he heard that a man had fallen in a locker room.

Dodge headed there to help and found the man lying on his back, unconscious, his skin an “abnormal red,” his eyes glazed. The man had a gash on his right temple.

Dodge radioed another employee, Lindsay Taylor, and told her to call 911.

At the same time, two off-duty Dixon employees, Joey Jenkins and Ben Misely, were converging on the scene. Jenkins, a sports club graduate assistant and Misely, a center manager, typically met at 7 a.m. to attend Bible study. But in a bit of serendipity, the two changed their plans on Wednesday.

“For whatever reason, I asked Joey to do 7:30,” Misely said.

Jenkins was changing in the locker room when he realized something serious was going on. He met up with Dodge to get the Automated External Defibrillator (AED). Just then, Misely ran into the locker room.

“It didn’t even occur to me how weird it was that Ben and Joey were there,” Dodge said.

When the three returned to the victim, who was being watched over by OSU Triathlon Club coach Michael Tasman, Misely cut the man’s shirt off and used his sweatshirt to dry him off so that the defibrillator’s pads would stick.

Dodge was about to start rescue breaths when the device recommended a shock.

“All of us kinda leaned back and then Joey pushed the button,” Dodge said.

After receiving the mild electric shock, the man sat up, leaned forward and exhaled heavily.

“I’ll never forget that sound of air leaving him,” Misely said.

When the man moved, so did his eyes. Dodge hoped that meant the ordeal was over.

But the man lay back down, the defibrillator indicated he was in distress and his rescuers began administering CPR. Jenkins started chest compressions and Dodge began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

All three noticed a definite point at which their patient seemed to come back to life, with stronger breathing and a detectable pulse. At about the time that the trio suspended CPR, medics arrived.

“Through the whole thing, it wasn’t us thinking what was next, we just did what was next,” Dodge said.

“The training just kicks in,” Misely agreed. “It’s just an instinct to respond.”

As of Saturday, the man they assisted — who is an employee at OSU — was in fair condition at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center. Snow said a family member had told him he’d undergone surgery and is expected to make a full recover.

“When we came in, we were looking at a dead man,” Misely said. “To think that he’s doing well now is somewhat unbelievable.”

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

66-year-old Pat Dugan now knows life is too short. Last December, he was playing racquetball with his son Matt at an Omaha YMCA when his heart went into cardiac arrest, and he fell to the floor.

“We had just got started, and the lights went out,” said Pat Dugan.

“When he dropped, we kind of nudged him a little because we thought he was joking,” Matt Dugan said. “Then one of the guys we were playing with said ‘I can’t find a pulse’ and I began trying to remember what I should do.”

“I did take CPR in 8th grade and then at college, so I somewhat knew what to do,” said Matt Dugan. But it wasn’t enough, so Matt called for help.

Also coming to Pat Dugan’s aid that day were off-duty Omaha firefighter Brad Witte, the YMCA’s aquatic director, Deb Munger, and head lifeguard Mike Ceeba.

Witte continued CPR while Munger attached an automated external defibrillator (AED) to shock Dugan’s heart back to life. Ceeba came running with an oxygen bag-valve mask to help him breathe.

Munger, who is certified to use the defibrillator, said it was the first time she had done so on a real patient.

“I’ve always kind of wondered how it would work out,” Munger said. “We gave (Dugan) one shock and about 15 (chest) compressions later he took a big gasp of air.”

“Luckily, my son was there and began CPR immediately,” Dugan said. “He also got the right people and the right equipment to me.”

Dugan was moaning and groaning when paramedics arrived to transport him to Lakeside Medical Center. He spent two days at the hospital before being released and is still trying to regain his full strength.

“If people - all people - would understand how to perform CPR, it would be a lifesaving accomplishment,” he said. “Having somebody there with CPR training and the right equipment made difference for me.”

“Our station is only a minute or two away, but even so, the patient was already shocked and breathing when we got here,” Vonderhaar said. “Those were critical steps and those people who took them are the real heroes.”