First Aid Corps

Bentonville junior baseball player, Wes Busby, 17, collapsed as the Tigers ran during a warmup for practice at Tiger Athletic Complex.

A teammate standing near Busby found a faint and erratic heartbeat.

Assistant baseball coach Curt Yarrington and athletic trainer Laura Wilson started CPR while baseball coach Todd Abbott called 911.

Emergency medical technicians arrived within five minutes and used a defibrillator to stabilize Busby’s heartbeat.

“I don’t think (the response) could have been any better,” Abbott said. “I think everybody kept a level head and did what they had to do and worked together. It is such a blessing that it happened that way.”

Busby was taken to Northwest Medical Center where he was kept stable and eventually taken to ACH by ambulance later that night.

After running several tests, doctors at ACH believe Wes Busby has Long QT Syndrome, a heart condition associated with ventricular arrhythmias.

He had surgery last week to place an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, which will help the heart return to normal function if another arrhythmia should occur.

“A lot of things had to happen just right,” Murray Busby said. “If it would have been a situation where nobody knew what was going on, nobody knew what was happening and just stood there, he wouldn’t be with us today. I’m not going to try to sugarcoat it or anything, because there were a lot of good people there that took care of him until the EMTs got there and took over.”

He can’t recall the first man’s name, but Etobicoke hockey arena senior operator Art Jones said “he’s back playing hockey” and they regularly chat.

Art Jones the Saviour

“He just went down on the ice, but a couple of the guys are city workers and realized what was happening,” he said.

Doug Clancy, then manager of an arena at Erindale College, joined him doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but they feared “we were going to lose him.”

Jones, who trained on the defibrillator about one month earlier, fetched the portable unit and got the victim’s heart beating with one jolt before paramedics arrived.

“I was at the other end of the lobby with my partner, Marco, and I just said ‘call 911′ and we started running and I grabbed the defibrillator and in I went,” he said, noting the arena has two public access defibrillators on-site for such incidents.

When Jones arrived at the scene, he found a 52-year-old regular named Wally down on the ice - unconscious, but still breathing.

“When I got over to (Wally) I started pulling out the unit and got his shirt up just in case he went down and, sure enough, he started going blue and stopped breathing. I had to slap the pads on his chest and hit him with a jolt,” Jones recalled.

With just the one reviving jolt, Wally’s eyes fluttered, his heart restarted and he was breathing again, albeit with laboured breaths, Jones said.

Friends were preparing to do mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions Thursday, but Jones intervened. “He’s going to be okay,” he said.

Grateful at the recognition, especially from arena regulars, he stressed “it’s important for people to realize the units are there, and to get training. Seconds count. If you can save a life, that’s what it’s all about.”

Paul Chaisson, 52, of Halifax said he started to feel dizzy while skating across the ice a little after midnight on Jan. 20 at the Centennial Arena.

“I saw the lights were getting funny and I knew I was going down,” Chaisson said Monday. “So I braced myself for it, and that was it.”

A paramedic from the opposing team rushed to his side, as did his teammate, Dr. Kirk Magee, who happens to be an ER doctor.

“As I got closer, Ken said he wasn’t breathing,” Magee said. “So we turned him over, and we called for the defibrillator.”

The assistant manager rushed for the defibrillator that’s kept at the arena.

The arena manager gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, while the experts did CPR and used the defibrillator.

Within minutes, they had a pulse.

Coming to, Chaisson still had his mind on the game.

“My teammates were all hovered around me and I wanted to get up right away. And the first thing I said to them [was]: ‘Did they call the game?’”

Chaisson plans to sit out the rest of the season will still be on the sidelines.

“As soon as I’m released from hospital, I’ll go back to the rink,” he said. And he doesn’t plan to stay away from playing hockey for too long.

“I can’t stay off the ice. It’s just in my blood,” he said, adding he loves “the camaraderie, the games, the fun, the exercise — the whole thing.”

Ryan Smith, 18, suffered a heart attack while at a local handball court in December.

His best friend proceeded to call 9-1-1.

A man apparently saw the incident transpire and rushed over to perform CPR on Smith before three EMTs arrived.

“If it wouldn’t have been for that person and the police officers and the people from the ambulance, then he would have had brain damage,” said Smith’s father, Nelson Arroyo.

Now, both Smith and his father want thank this Good Samaritan.

“He just came, did what he did and disappeared. Whoever he was, he saved my life. Thank you for that,” said Smith.

EMTs needed a defibrillator to start Smith’s heart.

“I’m happy this kid was able to make it through because of these two people before us, and we just showed up and did our job. That’s all we did,” said Chris Leavitt, an EMT with Patriot Ambulance.

An emotional night Tuesday for the folks over at Parkview High School in Little Rock.

Sophomore Chris Winston collapsed during the game with Searcy.

Winston, #22, stopped breathing and they had to use a defibrillator to bring him back.

Winston was taken to the hospital where he began breathing on his own.

Early indications are he suffered a seizure, but Coach Al Flanigan says they’ll move Winston to Arkansas Children’s Hospital Wednesday to run more tests.

Derek Robison, a Weymouth firefighter since 2006 and a certified emergency medical technician, 38, was watching the hockey game of his 6-year-old son, Donovan, when a man wearing hockey skates came rushing out from one of the other rinks shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday.

He was looking for a doctor.

“He said someone needed help,” Robison said.

Robison and a nurse, whose daughter plays on his son’s Weymouth Youth Hockey team, ran over to see what they could do.

“Someone said he (McCracken) had just come off the ice when he collapsed near the bench,” Robison said.

Others had gathered around retired police Lt. Joseph McCracken, 65, and were trying to help him when the unidentified nurse and Robison pitched in with their life-saving efforts.

The nurse and the firefighter used CPR to keep retired police Lt. Joseph McCracken, 65, alive with blood flowing to his heart and brain.

That’s when a pro-shop worker, Derek Benton saw what was going on, suspected the victim was suffering from a heart attack and knew the nearest defibrillator unit was across the street at the Queen Anne Nursing home. “I just bolted out the door, “said Benton. “I knew he needed the de-fib unit.”

“I put one pad on one side of his chest,” said Duxbury firefighter Jim Kittredge,” and Sharon Demio put the other pad near his heart.”

A Hingham Fire Department ambulance arrived minutes later to take McCracken to South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, where he was listed in good condition Tuesday.

Hoby Taylor, Pilgrim’s president, said McCracken has been renting ice time for men’s hockey games for many years.

“He’s a very, very nice man,” Taylor said. “It’s very rare that something like this happens.”

“I can’t say thank you enough to the people who helped my father,” said Lisa McCracken, the daughter of Joe McCracken, who had a heart attack while playing hockey over the weekend.

“We did what we were trained to do,” Robison said.

Gordon Crozier of North River went into cardiac arrest during the second period of his grandson’s Atom ‘A’ hockey game at the APM Centre.

Steve Stapleton the Saviour

Three spectators at the game quickly scooted into action.

Steve Stapleton, 59, of Charlottetown was among the impromptu trio that came to Crozier’s aid.

Trained in CPR (he had his most recent refresher course just last year), Stapleton started performing CPR after Crozier “started turning blue” and a pulse could not be found.

Stapleton did chest compressions on Crozier, a long-time friend, as another man blew air into Crozier’s lungs.

One of those who sprang to help Crozier was cameraman Steve Stepleton of CBC Charlottetown.

While Stapleton performed CPR for “what seemed likes hours” but in reality was more like five minutes, a woman named Rizpah MacPhee ran to get the rink’s defibrillator.

‘”We gave Gordon one jolt and he came around,” Stapleton said. “Then we kept administering the CPR, monitoring his breathing and watching for a pulse, and we just did that, with help from the others, until the EMS arrived and took him to hospital.”

“I don’t know if the ambulance could have got here fast enough for the person to survive, but the defibrillator did its job,” Donna Butler, APM Centre manager, said Monday.

Crozier was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Wade Crozier later reported that his father was resting comfortably at the QEH. Wade offered “many thanks to all who helped out as without your help and the defibrillator at the rink, this would be a very different message.”

Stapleton, a soft-spoken and humble man, wasn’t too eager to be pegged as a hero.

“It wasn’t just me,” he said of the quick response to a life-threatening situation. I was just a part of it. And thank God Gordon is still alive. I have known Gordon for years.”

Steve Stapleton believes everybody should have CPR training.

“You hope you never have to use it but at least if something happens, you know how to use it and it could save somebody’s life,” he said.

It was near the end of the final hockey game of the season for a group of Nanaimo oldtimers hockey players and one that would forever change the life of Paul Walters.

The 52-year-old harbour patrol captain had enjoyed the sport for four decades and was nearing the end of the Dec. 21 matchup when he felt an intense pain in his chest that he thought might be attributed to his asthma.

Walters recalls lacking the classic heart attack symptoms, such as shooting pain down an arm or chest and told his team he was packing in for the night when he felt sick.

His chest pain intensified and as he changed in the dressing room, he told someone to grab fellow player Dave Sheepwash, an off-duty paramedic also trained in advanced life support.

Sheepwash asked someone to call 911 just as Walters collapsed and stopped breathing.

Sheepwash and players Jeff Braun and Pat O’Dwyer took turns administering CPR and used the AED ( automated external defibrillator ) which was available at the Nanaimo Ice Centre which was fitted in late 2008, as they waited for paramedics.

It took five hours to stabilize Walters, who was transported to a Victoria hospital where he learned an artery was badly blocked. After surgery he was moved back to Nanaimo Regional General Hospital and released on Boxing Day. He will continue his recovery at home.

It is a happy Christmas story for Walters but the incident has given life a new meaning for the active father, who only three weeks earlier had received a good bill of health after a routine physical.

“My thoughts are now to take fitness more seriously,” said Walters on Saturday. “You get your life back and you find out you have so many friends. I’m very humbled by the reaction I’ve had.”

Andrew Blanshard from Denby Dale was on a course learning how to teach swimming at Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in Sheffield when the incident happened.

He said: “During the lunch-time break I went for a swim and the next thing I knew I woke up hospital two days later.

“I just blacked out and went down in the water. I later found out that I had a heart condition and this could have happened at any time.”

Andrew was pulled from the water by lifeguards who spotted that he had lost consciousness.

They performed life-saving resuscitation on the business consultant using a defibrillator when they discovered he had stopped breathing.

Andrew has taken part in sports all his life and is a member of Wakefield Triathlon Club.

Andrew was fit and healthy and had competing for years in triathlons around the world.

He said: “I’m incredibly fit so it just goes to show that this can happen to anyone.

“I am just so grateful to the staff for saving my life.

“It really is a testament to their training, as well as their personalities, that they did everything perfectly during the rescue and the venue should be extremely proud of them.”

Helen Broadbent, general manager at the Sheffield International Venues-managed pool, said: “Everyone at the venue is thrilled that Andrew is recovering well from his ordeal.

“It was the first time we used the defibrillator unit for real and highlighted how critical it is that pools have one available.”

Andrew is now recovering at home after spending 10 nights on the coronary care unit at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital.

The game was in the last 10 minutes of the tournament final when witnesses say Sgt. Perry Batchelor, an Altona police officer, reached down for the puck during a stoppage of play and collapsed.

The witness said 911 was called and several nurses, and an RCMP officer in the crowd were among those who sprang into action in front of the shocked crowd.

They grabbed the defibrillator from its place in the Sunflower Gardens lobby, and used it along with CPR for what witnesses say was 15 minutes until paramedics arrived.

He was taken to the Health Sciences Centre and went into surgery two days later.

The defibrillator used to save Perry Batchelor’s life was acquired by the Millennium Exhibition Centre, thanks to the hard work of Batchelor himself.

Recreation services manager Ron Epp said the reason that device was there, was Perry Batchelor.

“He was the driving force behind getting it in,” Epp said.

“A lot of stars had to align in order for me to be here,” Batchelor said from his home in Altona yesterday.

“The reality is people can have a heart attack just getting up from a chair,” he said. “So it makes sense to have them where large groups of people are or where people are exerting a lot of physical energy. (Defibrillators) save lives … they really do.”

“I’m pretty lucky,” he said. “I was feeling fine after that game, too. It just shows how quickly things can change.”