First Aid Corps

A elementary school nurse says she is thankful that her school was equipped with an automated external defibrillator after reviving a custodian who collapsed today in the hallway near her office.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

Walter Haigh Elementary School nurse Tara Hayes said she was in her office when she saw the school’s custodian collapse.

“It was scary, and it was someone I work with and love,” Hayes said.

As the 62-year-old began to lose consciousness, paraprofessional Jomarie Curtis carefully lowered him to the floor in the hallway right next to the nurse office.

“It was the most intense thing I’ve ever seen,” Curtis said.

As Curtis laid the man down, nurse Hayes grabbed the school’s automated external defibrillator (AED) and began to resuscitate him.

“I put it on him, shocked him, and then did CPR, then shocked him again. When I shocked him the second time, his color came back and he knew who I was,” Hayes said.

The school received the AED from the Salem Rotary Club about six years ago, but this is the first time it’s been used in a real-life situation.

“It was a miracle,” Hayes said.

The custodian is recovering in the hospital.

Hayes said she’s been a nurse for 18 years and had never encountered any situation as serious.

“I think every school should have and be trained to use AEDs,” Hayes said.

Four employees at State Farm Corporate South performed chest compressions and used an AED to save the life of systems associate Ashok Goyal after he collapsed when he arrived at work on Dec. 24.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

Goyal returned to work this week. On Thursday, he thanked the four employees Brad Reside, Wayne Bartley, Deana Moore and Victoria Joaquin.

“It was a Christmas miracle,” said Moore, a registered nurse in employee health services.

Goyal, 57, of Bloomington, experienced no symptoms of a heart attack before Dec. 24 when he arrived at work and collapsed.

Reside, a technical analyst, heard Goyal fall. Reside called for Bartley, also a technical analyst, and the two men alternated doing chest compressions to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive.” Reside yelled for someone to get an AED.

Moore and Joaquin, also a registered nurse in employee health services, ran with an AED to Goyal, who had no pulse. They tore open his shirts and Moore administered a shock from the AED, which restored Goyal’s heart rhythm.

“That was a huge relief,” Reside recalled. The nurses continued chest compressions and rescue breaths until paramedics arrived.

Goyal found out later that two arteries were blocked and doctors at OSF St. Joseph Medical Center reopened them and inserted three stents to keep the arteries open. He spent four days in the hospital.

“I feel better now,” Goyal said. “They saved my life.”

David Mercik was going about his normal routine in the early morning of Sept. 6, preparing to end his overnight shift at Simonds International in Fitchburg.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

Mercik, of Ashburnham, who has worked at Simonds for 28 years, the majority on the overnight shift, doesn’t remember much of what happened that day, only waking up in a hospital room at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester.

At about 4:30 that morning, other workers were preparing to go home, while the day shift was just coming in.

David Mercik the Survivor

It was then that Mercik was found by a fellow employee slumped over his desk, unconscious.

They quickly laid him on the floor and began chest compression’s, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and shocked his heart with a defibrillator.

Mercik, who had suffered a heart attack, says he has no memory of what happened.

“I honestly don’t remember anything. I don’t even remember many of the days leading up to that, and what I did,” he said. “I guess they saved my life. It’s a good thing they had the defibrillator charged and ready to go. The right people called the right people.”

He’s contacted most of the men who helped, including Andy Lampson, who used the defibrillator paddles on him and gave him mouth-to-mouth.

Lampson was just starting his shift when he saw co-workers frantically running around the office, calling for help.

When he saw what was going on, he never thought twice about reacting. He grabbed the defibrillator.

“I never questioned what I needed to do. It was the right thing,” Lampson said Thursday from his Sterling home.

He was never trained on using the life-saving machine or even administering CPR, but his girlfriend and her mother are both nurses, so he had an idea of what needed to happen.

He said he and his girlfriend recently visited her mother at the emergency room at Leominster Hospital when a patient went into distress and CPR was administered.

“I saw how forceful you had to be with the compression’s, so I had a general idea of what I needed to do. The machine was easier to use than I thought,” he recalled. “There were pictures that came along with it, and after a certain point, it started talking to us.”

He said his biggest asset during the ordeal was being able to stay calm, cool and collected.

“You needed to be clear-headed and rationale. Getting all worked up wasn’t going to help any,” he said. “I was pretty scared during this whole thing. When he was being loaded into the ambulance, he didn’t look good, and I was really worried he wasn’t going to make it,” Lampson said.

Mercik’s wife, Debby, said she’ll never forget getting a phone that morning saying her husband was in the back of an ambulance and headed to the hospital.

He was initially taken to HealthAlliance Hospital and then transferred by medical helicopter to UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, where he remained for two weeks.

Debby credits the quick response from his co-workers in saving her husband’s life.

“He was found unresponsive in a chair, slumped over by a co-worker who laid him down and called for help,” she said. “Thank goodness they have a defibrillator on hand. From what I understand, he had no pulse. This whole thing has been a nightmare.”

She said her husband never had any medical issues, and the night before his attack he had gone bowling.

“He had no shortness of breathing, nothing. All summer, he was in the pool and the garden and doing things around the house,” she said.

Since his heart attack, she’s struggled to find the right words to express her gratitude for what people have done for her family.

“Thank you seems so lame. We can never say thank you enough to them. It just doesn’t seem enough,” she said.

If there’s one thing she hopes people take away from her story, it’s that all employers should make sure their employees have access to the proper medical equipment at work in case of a medical emergency.

“To be honest with you, we’re very private people. This is so important. If I have to be the voice on how important it is to have these in the workplaces, then so be it,” she said. “This could happen to anyone. We were told the defibrillator saved his life. There needs to a protocol in place in the workplace. It we can make the difference in passing this to one family, then great.”

A little more than two weeks ago, Wayne Pritchard died. His heart stopped pumping and he had no pulse. Today, he’s at home with his wife, thanks to an automated external defibrillator (AED) and fast-acting co-workers.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

Wayne, 51, started work at 6 a.m. July 11 at Spartech Corporation, where he’s been employed for 14 years. After a busy morning, he talked with a few co-workers about going to get lunch, not knowing those same co-workers would save his life seconds later.

Wayne Pritchard the Survivor

Wayne said he picked up his tool bag and felt dizzy as he headed to lunch. The thing he remembered next was waking up on the floor with paramedics around him.

Wayne had gone into instant cardiac arrest, or had a sudden death, and his co-workers revived him with an AED.

Later, at the hospital, doctors determined he had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which had caused the muscle in his heart to thicken.

It’s a genetic disease he had been tested for earlier in his life, but he had been told he didn’t have it. He never had any symptoms.

Dr. Sai Devarapalli, Wayne’s cardiologist with Medical Consultants, said the disease affects a fifth of the general population.

Doctors told Wayne’s wife, Kathleen Pritchard, it was a miracle Wayne was alive. The only reason she wasn’t planning his funeral was because of the device and the employees who used it.

“Most people don’t come back, that’s the miracle of it,” she said. “The doctor said that no CPR would have saved him.”

Devarapalli agrees that nothing else would have restarted Wayne’s heart.

“The AED is almost always successful depending on what the cause of the arrest is,” Devarapalli said.

Wayne and Kathleen want people to know the machine does save lives, and they hope more companies will install them. “Every place ought to have an AED,” Wayne said.

“People need to know, these things work and lives can be saved,” Kathleen added. “It’s a miracle; he should not have made it.”

“Survival of the person is dependent on how quickly you can get the first shock to the person,” Devarapalli said.

If an incident like Wayne’s happens in a place without an AED, it could take 10 to 15 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, and by then, it’s often too late.

“Those are golden minutes that can mean life or death,” Devarapalli said. “This gentleman is a perfect example of why all industries or factories should have it.”

Wayne and his wife are eternally grateful the company had an AED and the men surrounding him knew how to use it. “I work with really awesome guys,” he said.

Joe Wylie, an engineer at Spartech, was four or five feet from Wayne when he collapsed. Wylie was also the one who used the AED machine.

Wylie and 30 other employees are trained in first aid and CPR, and they were trained by the Red Cross to use the AED.

Wylie had only ever used the AED in training, and he said he never thought he’d actually have to use it.

“When it actually shocked him, it actually lifted him off the ground,” Wylie said. “It was kind of shocking.”

A few seconds later, Wayne was conscious and speaking again. “It made me feel good,” Wylie said.

Jack Collins, another Spartech employee, helped direct paramedics to where Wayne was.

Kathleen’s happy she and their adult children get to spend more time with him.

“We don’t know how to thank them (Wayne’s co-workers),” she said. “They gave me my husband back, them and God.”

Wayne now has an automated internal defibrillator (AID) placed in his heart. The internal defibrillator will save him if his heart stops again.

“It’s there monitoring his heart 24/7,” Devarapalli said. “He won’t need the AED anymore because he has one inside his heart.”

Wayne said he hopes he’ll live a long life now that he has an internal defibrillator, and he’s feeling better and healing.

Spartech plans to install another AED machine in the building, which is expanding.

Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 137th Aviation Regiment, proved the effectiveness of their Automated Electronic Defibrillator and training they had previously received, when a civilian contractor who had been working on the unit’s rooftop at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base went into cardiac arrest, March 6.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

Maj. Wayne Thomas, 1-137th administrative officer and a Dublin, Ohio, resident, reacted to shouts for help from the workers and found the contractor without a pulse and not breathing. First Sgt. Jose Camacho, Headquarters and Headquarters Company first sergeant and a resident of Lancaster, Ohio, and Staff Sgt. Neal Thompson, training non-commissioned officer for Company E, 1-137th Aviation and a Columbus resident, climbed to the roof to assist.

“When I got there, the guy was purple, so we started chest compressions,” Camacho said. Thompson and Camacho alternated with Thomas doing compressions. Thompson called out for the AED, and hooked it up to the contractor. Thompson used to be an AED instructor and went through training on the equipment in 2010.

“The machine shocked the guy three times,” Camacho said. “It worked like clockwork.” Camacho said it was ironic that Thompson had just tested the equipment a couple days before. “I remember because an alarm sounds when you open the box,” Camacho said. AED machines can be found in wall mounted boxes, usually in hallways, in all Ohio National Guard installations.

“He had a heartbeat when we were done with him and the paramedics showed up,” Camacho said. When Hamilton Township paramedics arrived on scene, they took over caring for the contractor.

“It was a relief when the guy finally woke up,” Camacho said. “If it wasn’t for our efforts, I think the guy would have died. It’s serious business, but the machine really works.” After the contractor regained consciousness, he was life flighted to Grant Medical Center in Columbus, where he was stabilized.

The 1-137th just went through a safety stand down in February and had medics conduct an AED/CPR brief.

“You walk by the AED and wonder what would happen if you actually have to use it,” Camacho said.

Depending on the remoteness of the location, help may be minutes or hours away. The AED reduces the time it might take to receive life saving care at installations and readiness centers throughout Ohio. With the help of a computerized narrator, the machine talks its user through the process to ensure proper operation of the device as well as to alleviate the stress of the situation. The Ohio Army National Guard has had an AED training program since 2008.

“That machine is awesome,” Camacho said, who asserted it was a good investment to have them at every installation in the state.