By Clark Judge
It’s not just the Killingworth Ambulance Association that needs more EMTs. It’s the people of Killingworth itself.
And I just discovered why.
Were it not for an EMT … in the right place at the right time … I might have lost my 68-year-old brother. He suffered cardiac arrest while working out one morning and, lucky for him … and for all those close to him … there was an EMT there to help save his life.
His name is Adam (he asked that I not use his last name), and he’s not from Killingworth. He lives in Chicago, and it was there … at a downtown athletic club … that he put his training into practice by helping to revive a clinically dead patient – my brother — through CPR and the use of an AED.
It really doesn’t matter where this happened. What matters is that it happened … period.
Adam knew what to do when others did not, and he knew what to do when there was little or no margin for error. Essentially, he knew what to do when a life was in peril because he’d been trained. As a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania he worked as an EMT with the on-campus Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT).
“I was at the gym on the machine directly in front of the patient,” Adam recalled in an e-mail, “doing my normal cardio while watching some Netflix with my earbuds in. Out of nowhere a woman came running up to the front of my machine, so I took my earbuds out. She frantically asked if I worked in health care because I happened to be wearing a T-shirt with the logo of a hospital, (and she) alerted me to the fact that there was a medical emergency directly behind me. I had no idea.”
Adam turned to see three women performing CPR on my brother. One, he said, was applying chest compressions. Another was administering breaths. And the third was monitoring the AED. CPR was undertaken, he said, for approximately 10 minutes before Advanced Life Support arrived to whisk my brother away to nearby Northwestern Hospital.
In those 10 minutes, Adam said, two shocks were advised and administered with the AED. I later learned that my brother’s heart had stopped for four minutes.
“The most important lesson from becoming an EMT,” Adam said, “was to stay calm and follow your training. There were a lot of people, onlookers and drama in the situation to be caught up in, and it was important to follow protocols.”
My brother was unresponsive for two-and-half days but opened his eyes that weekend and was taken off a respirator within 48 hours. His recovery was so immediate, so complete and so remarkable that he was sent home within a week-and-a-half and today contemplates returning to work in January.
All of that was communicated to Adam, who, understandably, was relieved.
“During the incident,” he said, “I was emotionally turned off and focusing on protocol. However, for the rest of the week I was quite shaken from the experience. It’s one thing to be an EMT when you signed up for a shift to be an EMT; it’s another to have a life-threatening emergency come up unexpected in your everyday life.
“I was very lucky to learn the patient made a full recovery (by hearing) through a random connection of a friend-of-a-friend. Otherwise, I would still be left wondering. I’m grateful I spent all that time learning to be an EMT.”
So are we.
What I learned in that week I spent in Chicago and what I gathered afterward underscored the importance of knowing CPR and the critical roles that our volunteers serve when they act as EMTs. In fact, when I returned to Killingworth, I ran into Mike Haaga, who leads EMT classes at the Ambulance Association with his wife, Marguerite, and notified him that my wife and I were interested in taking a CPR course.
I told him it was a voluntary decision, but I know better. It’s not. Adam made me do it.
Knowing what he and others did that morning in Chicago convinced me that maybe, just maybe, I could do the same one day. If nothing else, it would at least serve to prepare me if I ever were faced with a similar situation.
“CPR is incredibly easy,” Adam said. “But the reality is: It’s somewhat of a burden to find the time and the money to go to a CPR class. However, I encourage everyone to find that time.
“I trained to be an EMT so I could work dedicated shifts at my college – responding to 911 calls during my shift. I never anticipated or expected to use my training outside of those set shifts. Odds are that you will never be in a situation where someone goes into cardiac arrest near you, but it is definitely worth taking a CPR class just in case. Because a life can be on the line.”
A life already was.