First Aid Corps

Faith Sendelweck would just like to get back to a normal routine.

She goes back to Jasper Middle School on Monday; however, this once high-energy soccer player is forced to take it a little easier from now on.

Sendelweck says she does not remember much of what happened one Sunday earlier this month.

“All I remember is diving for a ball and throwing it back,” Sendelweck said. “That’s pretty much it.”

She was playing soccer in the gym of Jasper High School.

Sendelweck’s dad was with her and he remembers seeing her collapse into a curtain hanging from the gym ceiling.

Dr. Dean Beckman just happened to be playing basketball with his son there, too, and immediately ran to help.

“(She was) becoming a little bit lethargic, sat down, became unconscious and then lost her pulse,” Dr. Beckman said. “We started CPR.”

Turns out, Sendelweck had a congenital heart condition that no one knew about.

“The rhythm is messed up,” Sendelweck said. “You have a short bump and then a big bump and then another short bump. My short bump drags on too long before my next heart beat and messes it up.”

Sendelweck might not be here had it not been for a defibrillator in the gym.

“You could tell she was starting to respond because her color came back, her lips turned pink and she was moaning,” Dr. Beckman said.

Sendelweck now has her own defibrillator, an IED, implanted in her chest.

Sendelweck is going to be a spokesperson for pediatric IED’s at Kosair’s Children’s Hospital.

Emergency medical workers were called to Alumni Soccer Field at Davidson College Saturday afternoon around 2:30 p.m. after a report that a youth-soccer official had collapsed during a game.

Davidson Fire Chief Jeff Almond said the man apparently had a heart attack and was not breathing.

As emergency personnel arrived, a doctor and a nurse who were attending the game were performing CPR on the man.

Emergency workers took over, continuing CPR.

They administered a shock using an automated defibrillator, and his heart returned to a normal rhythm, the chief said.

The man was taken by ambulance to Presbyterian Hospital in Huntersville, where he was treated briefly. He was then taken on to Presbyterian Hospital’s main location in Charlotte for further treatment.

Beyond that, his condition was not known late Saturday afternoon.

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

Soccer Player Saved

Kacsmar, a competitive soccer player, collapsed when his heart stopped during a game at the old Highlander Sportsplex last winter.

“First of all, they thought I was trying to fake an injury, like, typical soccer player,” Kacsmar recalled yesterday. “When they realized my lips were starting to turn blue and I wasn’t breathing, they started to do CPR.”

That didn’t work, but an arena worker came to his aid with a portable defibrillator. “The defibrillator saved me,” Kacsmar said.

“They’re totally idiot-proof,” Kacsmar said. “They talk you through everything. They tell you exactly where to put the pads and tell you either push the button or don’t push the button.”

After his heart stopped, he was put into a medically induced coma for two days while doctors ran tests to find out what happened. They found nothing, and concluded that sometimes the heart just stops.

“They’re not that expensive,” Kacsmar said. “And it only has to work once.”