First Aid Corps

The coach of a Warminster youth basketball team suffered a heart attack in the last two minutes of a Warminster Basketball Association game at William Tennent High School Sunday afternoon.

Warminster Fire Chief Mitch Shapiro, whose son was playing in the game, and two parents who are nurses, rushed onto the court and used an automated external defibrillator to revive the coach, a man in his early 60s.

The fire chief said he has used the AED to revive people in the past, “but it is a lot different when you know the person.”

Shapiro said the coach was taken to Abington Memorial Hospital where he was undergoing tests Sunday night.

On April 11, Lori Duchow, a pediatric nurse at Riverview Hospital in Wisconsin Rapids, was watching an adult basketball game during a tournament at Nekoosa High School with her two daughters when she saw a man collapse on the court.

Duchow rushed to his side, told people surrounding him she was a nurse and instructed them to call 911.

The man was breathing and had a pulse, but when Duchow checked a few minutes later, she could no longer feel the beat of his pulse.

She instructed someone to find an automatic external defibrillator, a device trained people can use to shock the heart back into action.

While she waited for the machine, Duchow started cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the unconscious man.

When someone brought the automated external defibrillator, Duchow used it and then continued CPR.

“The machine tells you what to do,” she said.

Duchow said while she worked on the man, she continued thinking she didn’t want him to die in front of 150 people, including children, in the gymnasium.

While she assisted the man, referees from the game worked to get the children into an adjoining room.

The man’s heart started beating again. When he awoke, he didn’t know what happened, Lori said. He wanted to get back up and start playing. Lori insisted he go to the hospital with the ambulance.

The next time Duchow saw the man in church, he and his wife thanked her for saving his life. The man gave Duchow a big hug.

“I cried,” she said.

Drew Brantley, 17, a school soccer and baseball star, was playing basketball with classmates last week when he collapsed and appeared to have a seizure.

Drew Brantley the Survivor

But nurse Brenda Strunk said she quickly realized it was much more severe.

“When we got to him, we were trying to find pulse on him. We couldn’t find a pulse,” she said.

Strunk grabbed an Automated External Defibrillator located outside the school’s gym and used it to bring the boy back from full cardiac arrest.

Brantley spent five days in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, where doctors said he had a heart condition that had gone undetected.

Now he is back home and thanking the people, and the machine, that helped save his life.

“I couldn’t tell you where one of (the AEDs) is in the school, although I guess I will now,” he said. “I’m just so happy that everybody knew how to use it, and everybody got there on time.”

“Only because of that device and the people at school is our son still alive” said Ron Brantley. “Make sure you get them. Even if you don’t have to use them, it’s a security blanket.”

On Jan. 16, David Feinstein was walking out of Southwest Rec Center on the UF campus in Gainesville when he heard cries for help.

Cook, a building construction professor who has done consulting work for Pulte Homes in Volusia County, had suffered a heart attack.

He had been playing racquetball with one of his students, 24-year-old Brando Fetzek, and a couple other friends when he told them he felt winded, needed to take a break, and would catch them on the next game.

“We finished the game in about five minutes, and as I walked out I saw him laying there,” said Fetzek, a Bradenton resident. “I called out for somebody to call an ambulance and that’s when David and his buddy came running over. David started to perform CPR.”

Several other students joined in, calling 911, alerting Southwest Rec staff to the emergency and helping with the CPR.

They set up a nearby AED — automated external defibrillator — which is used to shock a non-beating heart into starting again.

“We put it on him and we shocked him and we got a pulse, but it wasn’t a very strong one,” Feinstein said. “He took a big gasp of air, but then he wasn’t breathing on his own, so we kept doing CPR.”

Paramedics transported Cook to the hospital where he stayed for five days. Since then, he has made a full recovery and has even returned to the classroom.

But it wouldn’t have happened without prompt action by the students. Reached by e-mail, Cook expressed appreciation for the help he received.

“I owe my life to Brando and David and three other students (Joey Murvis, Karina Reyner and Josh Rubin) who administered CPR and AED. I will be forever grateful to them,” Cook wrote.

Meanwhile, Feinstein’s parents, Larry and Candace of Ormond Beach, are understandably proud because for all his good grades and ambition, his latest accomplishment put everything in a new perspective.

“You want your kids to go out and do good. You couldn’t ask for anything better,” his mother said.

Michael Crane, 26, was at Novato High School gym in November and getting ready to play a playoff adult league basketball game.

Michael Crane the Saviour

Forrest Manning’s team had just lost and he had just sat down in a chair.

About 20 seconds into Crane’s game, Manning fell out of the chair and his teammates called out for help.

Crane is a graduate student at Arizona State University and is finishing his thesis for a degree in fire department administration.

He finished an 18-month internship with the Napa Fire Department in early 2008 and is trained as an emergency medical technician.

Crane gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions until Novato paramedics arrived.

Manning received shocks from a defibrillator and was taken to a hospital.

He is recovering from having two stents installed in previously blocked arteries.

With some help, Manning tracked down Crane, who recently moved to San Francisco, to thank him. “It’s strange because how can you really thank somebody completely who saved your life?” Manning said. “I’m sure he knows how much it meant.”

Crane said he got goosebumps when Manning called. “I was taken aback by it all,” he said. “I think everybody who was there that night has seen the impact of knowing CPR. Hopefully people will take the steps to learn it so they have the ability to save a life.”

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.”

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.

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.