Jamie Donaldson the Survivor

Jamie Donaldson made it to the finish line of the Sydney Running Festival at the Opera House after running 21km yesterday before collapsing.

“I had the good fortune of collapsing at the finish line — if it had of been somewhere else I probably wouldn’t be around at all,” he told Nine News.

Startling video shows paramedics working desperately to bring the father-of-two back to life with a defibrillator.

On the third attempt, his heart started pumping again.

Mr Donaldson is fit and healthy, and this was the third long distance run he had taken part in this year.

But on this occasion he had underestimated the impacts of heat and dehydration.

“It sounds to me like I was bordering on the end,” he said.

“I’ve been told I was dead for six minutes.”

Sam Shafer & Bob Wright the Saviours

A 17-year-old Decorah cross country runner collapsed Thursday evening while running in the Rich Engel Cross Country Classic at Birdsall Park in Cedar Falls. A spectator at the event, Dr. Greg Hoekstra, administered CPR until Cedar Falls police officer Sam Shafer and reserve officer Bob Wright arrived on the scene. The officers had an automated external defibrillator and administered a shock to jump-start the teen’s heart.

He was taken to Sartori Memorial Hospital.

Sartori personnel called the on-scene response a “textbook save” and noted that CPR alone most likely would not have saved the teen’s life.

Adam Riley, activities director for Decorah High School, said the student is doing well but was still in Cedar Falls for testing as of Friday afternoon.

“We’re very appreciative of the efforts of the Cedar Falls Police Department and Sartori hospital,” Riley said Friday. “We very easily could have lost a student yesterday.”

Cedar Falls police have been carrying the defibrillators in each squad car for about eight years. Each officer is recertified to use the device each year.

“Frequently, we’re on the scene before ambulances and paramedics, so you have to do what you can,” said Police Chief Jeff Olson. “We’re just thrilled when we can do something like this to help.”

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“He was unconscious. You could see he was really struggling to breathe and we couldn’t find a pulse,” Ms Neyland said.

David Priest (center) the Survivor

“I yelled out to Eric (Hansson), who is the triathlon coach, to come and help me. I told him to do the respiration while I did the compressions.”

While the pair attempted to resuscitate the 42-year-old father, squad member Matthew Cross sought help from staff at the neighbouring Reservoir Leisure Centre.

Gary McAllister and Nick Zissis shocked him with a defibrillator three times before Ms Neyland continued CPR until MICA paramedics arrived.

“If I had left it longer he would have died,” Ms Neyland said.

“He wasn’t getting any oxygen to his brain and the longer you leave it you either die or have brain damage.

“I was really scared he was going to have brain damage because we had been doing CPR for so long, so I was amazed to hear he woke up and said ‘when can I go back to training’.”

All five received Ambulance Victoria bystander commendations last Monday.

Nominating intensive care paramedic Bradley Roberts said that without the early CPR and defibrillation, Mr Priest probably wouldn’t have survived.

Reservoir Leisure Centre manager Gary McAllister said the defibrillator had been an “invaluable resource”, having been obtained two years ago after much lobbying to Darebin Council.

Mr Priest, from Macleod, said he would be “forever grateful” that he was still here for his wife and children.

Aimee Chlebnik the Saviour with her father Bob Chlebnik

Chris Troyanos, medical coordinator for the Boston Marathon, called Aimee Chlebnik a ”hero” and said he would grant an exemption to the usual qualifying standards so she can participate in the April 2012 race.

Troyanos learned about Chlebnik’s situation from a Coloradoan story that was emailed to him by a friend in Minnesota.

”I read that story, and this woman stopped her own race to help another runner, not knowing who it was at first, and helped save his life by administering CPR,” Troyanos said. ”You’re not going to get any more of a reason for a waiver than that.”

Other participants were huddled over Robert Chlebnik, 63, of Goodrich, Mich., and performing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on him about two miles from the finish line of the May 1 race when Aimee Chlebnik, 27, a certified emergency medical technician who teaches CPR classes, stopped to offer her assistance.

Her father had been walking the 13.1-mile half-marathon, which started 45 minutes later at the halfway point of the 26.2-mile marathon course.

”As near as we could tell, he did not have a pulse when I got there,” Aimee Chlebnik said. ”The most terrifying part is being an EMT and knowing when somebody’s in that situation they usually don’t come back. More times they don’t come back than they do, and my brain knew that. I was trying not to think about that and just doing what needed to be done.”

Poudre Fire Authority paramedics arrived about five minutes later, Aimee Chlebnik said, and used an automatic defibrillator to get Robert Chlebnik’s heart pumping. He was rushed to Poudre Valley Hospital, where he underwent surgery a few days later to have three stents placed in arteries.”Even to think about it now is kind of terrifying,” Aimee Chlebnik said, ”because I went from this runner’s euphoria – I was having this great race, and I was almost done; I was exhausted. It was a total switch of adrenaline from running this race to being totally concerned about my father and trying to figure out what was going on.

”Even today, it still feels like something that happened to somebody else. I tried to put myself in the EMT mode and not think about the fact that it was my father.”

Aimee Chlebnik, an outreach coordinator for the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center and volunteer EMT with the fire department in West Yellowstone, Mont., ran the Colorado Marathon twice before while earning her undergraduate degree at Colorado State University and figured it was a good race for her to try to meet the 3-hour, 40-minute Boston Marathon qualifying standard for her age group. She was on pace, she said, to finish in about 3:35 or 3:36, when she came upon her father near the 24th mile of the marathon along the Poudre River Trail, west of Shields Street.

”I was running probably the best race of my life before this happened,” she said.

Colorado Marathon race director Brian Cathcart said he was pleased Troyanos was granting Aimee Chlebnik a waiver. Colorado Marathon officials had not yet received a response to their request to race officials in Boston to grant the waiver.

Robert Chlebnik, a diabetic with a bad hip, was a frequent participant in road races and had no known heart issues prior to this incident, said his wife, Ann.

His recovery, Ann Chlebnik said, has been nothing short of remarkable. He walked a mile earlier this week, and Tuesday was driving home with her from Missouri, where they attended a family member’s graduation ceremony. If all goes as planned, Robert Chlebnik will be in Boston next year to see his daughter cross the finish line of the marathon. The family plans to return to Fort Collins next May to walk the Colorado Marathon’s half-marathon together.

‘’That would be just incredible,’’ Aimee Chlebnik said. ‘’It’d be so meaningful for me not only to be able to run Boston but to know that my father would be there to watch me finish and to know that he’s still around. He told me, ‘You should have kept going; you should have qualified,’ There are lots of races that I can run, but I only have one dad.’’

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She was “awake and doing OK” at the hospital this morning, according to school spokeswoman Maren Smagala.

Veronica Conly the Saviour

The school this afternoon issued a statement congratulating the coaches and cheerleaders “for acting quickly and bravely during cheerleading tryouts last night.”

As part of tryouts, the girls were jogging through the hallways of the school when the junior collapsed in a second-floor hallway and went into a seizure, Clinton Township police said. Other girls reported noticing that she was experiencing shortness of breath before she collapsed.

The school told what happened next: Coach Veronica Conly responded quickly to the cheerleader and told cheerleader Lauren Froschhauser to call 9-1-1 on her cell phone. Head Coach Tiffany Slowinski used her two-way radio to advise trainer Karen Korbul of the emergency.

Allison Arth the Saviour

Conly found that the girl had no pulse and began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the her. She did about seven cycles of CPR before Coach Allison Arth arrived to help. Arth used the automated external defibrillator (AED) to help revive the girl’s heart. Kelly Strauss, the mother of another girl at the tryouts, also helped with the effort, police said.

“I just kept saying, ‘Don’t die on me, Heather,’ “ Conly said.

By then, Clinton Township Police Officer John Tiger arrived and continued CPR on the cheerleader until the emergency medical personnel arrived. Clinton rescue squad and the Hunterdon Medical Center paramedics arrived and took over reviving the teen.

“Then the paramedics came and I just walked away and collapsed, and I cried,” said Conly. “I was just hoping she would be alive.”

The State Police Northstar medical airlift helicopter landed around 7:15 p.m. and flew the patient to Morristown Hospital. Around 8 p.m., Slowinski confirmed with the teen’s parents that she was in stable condition.

“Thanks to all the people that were on site helping during the emergency,” Principal Mike Hughes and Athletic Director John Deutsch said in the school’s statement.

“We are very proud at the response and attention that was demonstrated by the coaches and cheerleaders. You’ve demonstrated Lion pride!”

Updates

“I consider myself incredibly lucky that Ms. Conly and Coach Arth were there for me,” said Heather Skillman of Union Township in an e-mail interview Tuesday. “Without them, I don’t know what could have and would have happened. North Hunterdon has such wonderful, trained staff… I owe my good condition to them.”

Heather Skillman the Survivor

Heather doesn’t remember much about what happened. “All I can remember is running through the second-floor hallways at North, and then everything went black,” she said. “The next memory I have is a vague feeling of being in the helicopter. I didn’t even know what happened until I woke up in the hospital.”

“So far, I’m doing well,” Skillman said in an e-mail interview on Tuesday. “Recovery has been fast and if anything, I’m just tired. The doctors here are wonderful and I meet new teams every day. They’ve done a lot of tests to figure out why it happened, and soon I’ll be getting surgery to put in an implantable cardioverter defibrillator to prevent it from happening again,” she said.

“I believe everything happens for a reason,” Conly said. “I was in the right place… I would hope that anybody would do the same for me. I just did what I was trained to do.”

Around 8:25 this morning the 54-year-old man fell near the corner of Bayshore and El Prado Boulevards. According to Tampa Fire Rescue officials, the man’s heart had stopped and he was not breathing.

Several bystanders immediately began performing CPR. They started yelling there was a man down, and paramedics Mike Campbell and George Nelson, who were nearby, came to the man’s aid within a minute.

They hooked him up to a defibrillator and were able to get his heart pumping again, officials said. Within a few minutes, the unidentified runner began moving around as he was being loaded into an ambulance.

By the time they arrived at Tampa General Hospital, he was talking again, officials said. He suffered serious facial injuries from the fall, but otherwise was OK, according to Captain Bill Wade.

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Viesselman and the athletes found Ken Nollen, a 63-year-old Pella resident and avid racquetball player, collapsed on the floor.

“He looked like he was convulsing so I thought he’d hit his head and was having a seizure,” Viesselman said. “I monitored him and at first I felt his pulse but then it went away.”

Viesselman sent the athletes to call 911 while Dustin Briggs, an assistant athletic trainer and clinical instructor at Central, joined Viesselman to perform CPR and use the AED.

The pair revived Nollen with one shock of the AED and he was taken to by ambulance to the Pella Regional Health Center. When his heart rhythm stabilized he was transported to the Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines where a stint was put in.

“It probably only took five minutes but it was a very intense five minutes,” Viesselman said. “It was the first person I’d seen not breathing, without a pulse or heart rate.”

Nollen was grateful to be in the right place at the right time.

“It’s pretty miraculous,” Nollen said. “All these things—where the heart attack happened, the trainers who may not normally be there so late, a defibrillator on site—were evidently planned by God to keep me alive a while longer.

“If this would have happened anywhere else there probably would have been too much response time for me to go without permanent damage or death,” Nollen said.

Nollen was able to celebrate his birthday two days later and he resumed playing racquetball about six weeks after the heart attack. Today he has no heart damage.

Viesselman had a strangely similar experience on a hot and humid afternoon on May 25, less than 60 days later.

After one mile on Central’s outdoor track, Steve McCann couldn’t get his breathing right. He knew spring-semester classes had ended but took his chances on getting inside Kuyper Gymnasium to reach a water fountain.

“Luckily one of the doors was open because they were refinishing the gymnasium floor,” said McCann, a 54-year-old Pella resident who jogs about three days a week.

On his way to the fountain McCann stopped and lay down, because the coolness of the floor felt good. Eventually he got a drink and lay back down on the floor.

That’s where Central’s athletics facilities operations coordinator Duane Houser found McCann.

“I was at the exercise science building across the street and a plumber needed a cart from the fieldhouse,” Houser said. “I saw McCann on the floor and asked how he was doing as I went around the corner.

“As I unlocked the fieldhouse door I looked back at McCann,” Houser said. “He was flailing his legs back and forth so I went back and he asked for an aspirin.

Houser, a former 22-year member of Pella law enforcement, has seen a lot of situations requiring an AED and has used one himself six times. He recognized something wasn’t right and went to the training room to see if anyone was around. He found Viesselman and Leslie Duinink, Central’s head athletic trainer and clinical instructor.

“It was a stroke of good luck we were there,” Duinink said. “We were supposed to have a golf outing as part of our Iowa Conference athletic trainers’ meeting, but there was a big downpour earlier, leaving standing water on the course. Chris and I just happened to be in the office.”

Showing signs of heat exhaustion, McCann was taken to the training room and put in a cold whirlpool.

“Initially he started to get better,” Viesselman said. “He was able to speak easier and he said he was feeling better but then all of a sudden he went into cardiac arrest.”

Holding a towel around McCann to keep him from sliding down in the tank, Houser helped get McCann out of the water before calling 911 as Viesselman started CPR and Duinink got the AED.

One shock stabilized McCann. The paramedics took him to the Pella Regional Health Center where he was transported to Mercy in Des Moines to have a stint placed.

“I can’t say enough for Chris, Leslie and Duane,” McCann said. “With their knowledge and staying calm under pressure, they’re just remarkable people to do something like that.”

Central’s staff members can’t recall any previous a life-threatening situations requiring the use of CPR and an AED, much less two in two months.

“I’m glad we were able to effect a positive change and it all worked out in the end,” Duinink said. ”The ambulance crew tells us it doesn’t always go that way so the fact we’re 2-for-2 here is pretty good.”

Each year the athletic training staff and students review first aid, emergency response, CPR and AED training.

“Some students think it’s ridiculous we make them do things over and over but there’s a reason,” Duinink said. “It’s about repetition so when you’re in a situation, your training will kick in and you’ll do it right.”

The students still in the training room when Nollen went down were prepared.

“The students really did a lot of work, especially calling the ambulance and getting the paramedics to the racquetball court,” Viesselman said. “They were very professional and handled it well.”

Briggs agreed the students controlled the situation.

“They didn’t really flinch or freak out, they just did what they were supposed to,” Briggs said. “I think it reaffirms what a strong program we have.”

“It really was a team effort providing care for those two people,” Viesselman said. “Everybody takes a different role and brings a level of experience. It goes much smoother and at the end of the experience you’re proud to be a part of that type of team.”

Harvey Rivera the Survivor

He was feeling fine but knew he had a long way to run to get to his place in Harwich.

So he stopped and started stretching. The next thing he knew, he was in Cape Cod Hospital. He had suffered a heart attack and fallen to the ground, unconscious and without a pulse.

a female nurse and a passing motorist saw the unconscious Rivera lying on the exercise trail on Old Town House Road. They called 911 and started CPR.

Yarmouth police Lt. Steven Xiarhos was off duty driving through town when he saw the scene. He said Rivera was gray, with his eyes rolled up to the back of his head.

“I’m telling you, he looked very dead. … In 32 years of police work, I have never seen a person come back to life like that,” said Xiarhos, who put out a call for additional help.

Yarmouth police Officer James Cheverie arrived, taking out an electronic defibrillator that Yarmouth police keep in their cruisers.

The officers administered a shock and continued CPR. Another officer and a department of natural resources officer helped out as well. Yarmouth fire personnel took him to the hospital.

“It’s great training and citizenship and teamwork,” Xiarhos said.

On Tuesday, he was shaken emotionally to find out the passing motorist who helped him, Kevin Wilson of Yarmouthport and Dedham, died last month from a heart attack.

“God called him back home,” Rivera said.

The news of Wilson’s death, along with his own close call, has energized Rivera to spread the word about the importance of CPR training and having a defibrillator nearby.

And he keeps his focus on his workplace, where he helps people with special needs get exercise. “I want to give back,” he said.

He said people still ask him if he saw a bright light before being resuscitated.

“I didn’t see a light but I woke up to my guardian angels,” he said.

Germain Boer the Survivor

“I think everything is going to be fine,” said son Bob Boer. “He is awake and I was able to speak with him earlier. I told him some of the news reports were putting him at between 50 and 60 years old and he just laughed.”

The elder Boer, a professor of accounting and director of the Owen Entrepreneurship Center at Vanderbilt University, runs the Bolt every year, his son said.

He’s very active and healthy,” said Bob Boer. “He goes to the gym at Vanderbilt in the mornings and has his routine with his gym team, and he runs on the greenway.

“I just thank God this happened with 8,000 people instead of when he was off by himself somewhere.”

Germain Boer was about a mile and a half into the Boulevard Bolt when he had the heart attack, said Troy Sparks, who was running the race for the first time alongside his wife, Beth.

The Sparkses are both registered nurses — he’s in the operating room at StoneCrest, she’s a nurse at John Overton High School.

Boer’s luck began with the Sparkses being about 5 feet away when he collapsed.

“We thought he had tripped, so I went to see if he was OK and saw that he wasn’t breathing,” said Troy Sparks, who immediately began CPR. “He was purple and bleeding. He’d fallen facedown and cut his face.
“He didn’t have a pulse.”

Within seconds, half a dozen other runners were helping in the CPR effort.

A minute later, Boer got lucky again. Dr. Corey Slovis joined the crew.

When it comes to emergency medicine, Slovis is among the best. He is chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and medical director for the Nashville Fire Department and Nashville International Airport.

“I was running, and I saw a number of people off to the side,” said Slovis, whose family has run in the Bolt for the past 10 years. “When I looked closer, I saw someone doing compressions, and that got my attention.”

Slovis, a doctor for about 30 years, said he was in awe by the first responders.

“Saving lives involves just a few things, and those people were doing them perfectly,” he said. “There was no way it could have gone better. The only thing I did was what I do every day.

“What Nashville needs to be proud of is that so many people knew how to do expert compression CPR and they were able to come together and save this man’s life. That’s the real story here.”

As the crew alternated doing compressions, an ambulance arrived and paramedics took over. Slovis went with him to Saint Thomas.

“Moments after I left the room, he had a (heart) rhythm,” he said. “Him getting CPR within moments of collapsing is what saved his life.”

Boer’s son credits Slovis and Sparks with saving his father’s life.

“I’m no hero,” Sparks said. “We just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and there were other people there besides us who jumped in and did a lot.

“I guess it wasn’t Mr. Boer’s time to go.”

He likely won’t soon forget the “100 + 1 Thanksgiving Day 10K Run/Walk” in Cincinnati.

“I can tell you what I told (Dave’s) wife and daughter (Thursday): ‘When we took him to the hospital, he was doing well,’ ” Jim Benken, special events manager for MedCorp, told The Enquirer on Friday.

It was Benken, with assistance from three fellow medics (Linda Walz, John McKenzie and Jason Martin), who applied the electrical paddles to Dave’s chest and restarted his heart.

“He had gone into cardiac arrest,” Benken said. “We shocked him…and were recharging the AED (automated external defibrillator) paddles when his heart re-started and he began gasping for air.”

Dave was coherent in the ambulance and his vital signs were good on the way to Christ Hospital, where he was admitted, Benken said.

The medics knew where to respond on the race course because another runner, around the age of 14 or 15, had cut short his race at Third and Elm streets. He ran for an ambulance near Paul Brown Stadium, about 60 to 70 yards away and just shy of the finish line.

“We can’t say enough about the nurses who stopped to administer CPR, and the young man who ran to tell us there was a man down,” Benken said.

No more than 15 to 20 seconds had elapsed from the time the man fell to when he was receiving CPR. Within another two minutes, Benken said, the paddles were being applied to his chest.

More than 12,000 people participated in the 6.2-mile race, which was won by 21-year-old Eric Finan, a junior at the University of Cincinnati.

After reviving Dave, Benken returned to his work station while his fellow medics transported the victim to the hospital. A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman and her daughter, who had both run and finished the race, asked Benken if he had any knowledge of any runners who might have experienced problems during the race.

After asking a couple of questions, Benken realized that Dave was the mother and daughter’s husband and father, respectively, so he called one of his fellow medics who had been at the hospital and was able to update the family on Dave’s condition.

Without anything more to a first name and age, a spokesperson was unable to update the runner’s condition on Friday.

The Enquirer first learned Friday of Thursday’s lifesaving event. A group that called itself “Concerned Turkey Trotters” e-mailed the paper:

“Yesterday, at about mile 5.25 of the 10K (6.2-mile) Turkey Trot, my running group saw a male runner that had just collapsed on the course. Another man, who said he was a doctor, ran to him and began doing chest compressions. It looked like he was not responding .… We haven’t been able to find any report on this man…”

It is not unusual for there to be a variety of cases that require medical attention during the Thanksgiving Day Run/Walk, said race director Julie Isphording. It is why there are ambulances stationed throughout the course. But Dave’s case was noteworthy, given that he had gone into cardiac arrest and received quick attention from his fellow runners, she said.

“Every single piece of the CPR equation fell into place, and did so in timely fashion,” Benken said.