First Aid Corps

A female student at Lancaster High School went into cardiac arrest Wednesday morning in the school. The girl collapsed right in the school’s lobby, around the time of the opening bell.

According to a spokeswoman for the district, another student got the nurse and they called 911.

The student was lucky there was also a response team already in place at the school. Fire officials tell 2 On Your Side that the girl is alive, largely because this team was so close to her.

“Thanks to their skill and our skill we were fortunate to have this young lady recover her heartbeat and breathing before she was loaded into the ambulance,” said Bob Sinclair, the first assistant chief of the Bowmansville Fire Department.

The girl fell around 7:30 a.m. Firefighters believe she is a junior or a senior. The school response team rushed to the girl and started giving her CPR.

“I can’t tell you how long it took them to get their team together and start CPR, but it was relatively quickly,” said Sinclair.

The student then regained consciousness and started talking at the school.

Firefighters say that the student didn’t go into full cardiac arrest. If she did, they say it would’ve been tough to get her back.

The student was taken to the hospital and the last we’ve been told is that she’s in intensive care.

An Evergreen High School senior owes her life to some quick-acting adults, and an automated external defibrillator in the school that got her heart beating again.

Tuesday morning, the unidentified senior collapsed in a secretary’s office. Four adults at the school immediately jumped into action.

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School nurse Debbie Fowler pulled the defibrillator from the cabinet and began CPR.

Dean of students Marshall Pendleton said the girl had no pulse, and chest compressions weren’t enough to bring it back.

“Within, I think, 13 seconds we determined that a shock was recommended, so we cleared and allowed that to proceed,” Pendleton said.

It took three shocks to bring back a good heartbeat, he said, adding that the student’s prognosis was good and she was recovering.

He said similar events had happened twice before in the school within the last two years. In each case, the student made a full recovery.

Pendleton credits the quick actions of the faculty and the ease of using an AED.

“You look at a picture, you open a bag, you put two stickers on somebody’s chest. That’s it,” he said. “The machine does the rest. Everybody would be comfortable doing that.”

During the offseason, like so many other NHL and AHL players, Brett MacLean gets back to his roots and plays hockey locally. There’s a group of guys in Owen Sound with whom the 23-year-old Phoenix Coyotes forward has played twice a week every July and August since he was in junior hockey.

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Last week, they saved his life.

During a game at Regional Rec Center, MacLean collapsed suddenly onto the ice. The other players reacted, at first, like MacLean was pulling a gag, joking about it as he was sprawled on the frozen surface.

Brett MacLean the Survivor

Then MacLean started to convulse. He was going into cardiac arrest.

Players Jason Gallagher and Jason Silverthorn began CPR on MacLean.

“It’s not easy performing CPR on someone you know very well and not knowing the outcome,” said Gallagher, who has taken CPR classes at least 10 times, to the Calgary Sun.

Jay Forslund, an off-duty firefighter, called the police and sought out the automated external defibrillator into the Regional Rec Center. Three minutes after he collapsed, his heart was shocked. When the paramedics arrived, they administered two more shocks. MacLean’s pulse had returned in eight minutes.

He was airlifted to University Hospital in London, and was moved out of intensive care late last week.

“We’re eternally grateful to them,” Karen MacLean told the Owen Sound Sun Times. “Absolutely there’s no question, his outcome is partially related to his good health and his strong fit body, but also because of the attention by the bystanders, the defibrillator machine and the ambulance.”

She thanked Gallagher when he visited MacLean in the hospital.

“Remarkable, a miracle. No other word to describe it. The last time I saw him, he had no vital signs and we were performing CPR on him. And within a few days he’s walking around and shaking my hand,” Gallagher told the Sun Times last week.

“I can’t emphasize how incredible it is what our medical professionals are able to do, because literally on Monday night, he had no vital signs, and this is Friday morning and he’s up walking around. I’m still in awe.”

First-grader Bowen Johnson is back at school with an implanted heart defibrillator two weeks after a teacher saved his life.

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The 7-year-old’s heart stopped during physical education on April 11 at Western Heights Elementary in Lake Charles.

“He was running around outside, playing with his friends for just about two minutes before he headed to the slide,” said Ken Flue, the school’s adapted physical education teacher for Western Heights. “He stepped on to the first step on the plastic playground and immediately collapsed.”

Flue moved the boy into the shade. Bowen had a faint pulse and was barely breathing. Then he stopped. Flue began rescue breathing and CPR while special-education aide April Jones ran to tell the front office to call 911.

Secretary Rhonda Cortez called on her cellphone while running to the playground, so she could relay instructions. Flue kept Bowen breathing for 10 minutes, until an ambulance arrived.

The school had also called Bowen’s parents, Steve and Eva Johnson, who arrived shortly before the ambulance.

“I was in shock. To see our son lying on the ground unconscious, he wasn’t breathing,” said Eva Johnson. “It was hard. It’s not something you see with children.”

Emergency medical technicians used a defibrillator to restart Bowen’s heart. Without Flue, he might have died before they arrived, they said.

“Everything worked just right. Everything was real surreal. When they put the paddles on him, I couldn’t watch that part,” Flue said. “He’s a very special kid, and it was definitely a God thing.”

Bowen was taken to Christus St. Patrick Hospital, then flown to Children’s Hospital in New Orleans, where doctors implanted a defibrillator in his chest. It was the 21st operation for Bowen, who was diagnosed two years ago with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy — a condition that causes the heart muscle to become abnormally thick, making it difficult for the organ to pump blood — and was badly burned in a house fire in October 2008.

After the fire, doctors gave him a 2 percent chance of survival. It was three months before he had recovered enough at a local hospital to be moved to a burn center in Cincinnati.

“He had to spend 3 1/2 months completely immobile. Then he went through all of the grafts and had to relearn how to walk, how to feed himself, to do anything on his own,” Johnson said. “He never stopped. Even when I knew it hurt him, he didn’t stop.”

Johnson attributes Bowen’s amazing recovery to his resilient spirit and fun personality. Bowen was able to return home in 2008, but must return to the burn center about twice a year for checkups and new skin grafts.

He has so much scar tissue in his left shoulder that doctors had to put the defibrillator farther away from his heart, in his right shoulder.

“He was in surgery for 5 1/2 hours while they tried to find a place and then tested to make sure it worked,” Johnson said.

For the first responders at Western Heights, having Bowen back at school is “nothing short of a miracle.”

“I’m so glad to see him. I’m glad he’s back,” Jones said. “He’s running around like nothing ever happened.”

“Bowen is probably one of the coolest kids I’ve ever met,” Flue said. “No matter what happens he just bounces right back. He’s just amazing.”

Bowen’s entire class welcomed him back, but it was his two best friends and “special helper” classmates who missed him and worried about him the most.

“I really missed him. I was worried because he was in surgery,” said Isabella Young, who helps Bowen write and hold his school supplies. “When he came back he said he had stitches in his arm so I’m even more worried about that.”

“It’s good he is back,” said Brylie Fontenot. “Today I helped him get his tray at lunch.”

Energetic as always, Bowen spent his first day back at school running around with his friends, playing his favorite “SuccessMaker” computer game, and watching an episode of “The Magic School Bus.”

“I’m happy I’m back, but now I have homework,” Bowen sighed.

A group effort between first responders and staff at Bixby High School has given a student a second chance at life.

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Jonathan Fussell, 15, was born with a heart defect. At the age of two, he underwent a heart transplant.

In the middle of a Monday class, that heart failed him — sending him into cardiac arrest.

Teacher Josh Smith helped give CPR to Fussell as assistant principal Roland Vernon grabbed a heart defibrillator, or AED.

“He was completely unresponsive and didn’t have a heart beat for a really long time,” Smith said. “Even after our machine shocked him for the first time, he didn’t have a pulse. It was really worrisome.”

But the Bixby faculty didn’t give up, relying on hours of training and the AED to keep him alive until medics arrived.

“Early defibrillation is what got Jonathan the fighting chance that he needed,” said EMSA spokesman Chris Stevens.

On Thursday Fussell was stable enough to fly to Little Rock Children’s Hospital, where he will go back on the transplant list.

Barbara Smart says the quick action of those involved is the reason her grandson is still alive. She believes every school should have defibrillators on sight.

“It is amazing. Every school in the nation needs to have these tools to work with,” she said. “Because you never know when this could happen to a child.”