Coach starting second life in Hamilton

Leon Schepers says it flatly.

“I shouldn’t be alive.”

Schepers knows flat. In 2008 at the Beijing Olympics he collapsed and had no heart activity for up to five minutes.

A little more than two years later, Schepers and his family are putting down roots as he takes on the head coaching job at the National Cycling Centre Hamilton (NCCH) in Ancaster.

He just finished testing about 2,000 middle and high school students at Hamilton schools as the NCCH identifies young people to recruit for competition leading to the 2015 Pan Am Games. (See story, page SP8)

But only determined CPR and defibrillator shock over a 30-minute period brought him back from the dead Aug. 19, 2008.

The South African coach was eating a piece of watermelon in a dressing room, recalls only that conditions were “superhot,” and then remembers nothing.

“At first they thought I’d choked on a seed and that led to the heart problem,” he said.

Accounts related to him later noted that he flatlined for up to five minutes before he received CPR and electric stimulus to get his heart pumping again.

He still has difficulty believing it.

“I was in excellent shape as a triathlete and had great results in testing before the Olympics.”

Schepers required three hours of emergency treatment after he was transported to hospital, the news service china.org.cn reported. Then he spent two weeks in hospital.

After extensive testing, Chinese doctors concluded he must have contracted a vascular infection.

He lost some short-term memory from the episode but gained a new perspective on how precious life is.

“My life has changed. I view things differently.”

But he said the crisis was not the motivating factor in moving to Canada. That grew from trips to Vancouver in the past and a chance to see more of this country.

“We’re really enjoying it and the best thing is our kids love their school.”

jkernaghan@thespec.com

905-526-3422

Teacher saves dying student with CPR

By Nikki Dowling

A Riverdale resident and former John F. Kennedy teacher and coach saved a student’s life at Lincoln High School in Yonkers, N.Y. on Oct. 27.

Charles Hill, an earth science teacher at the school who coached basketball, soccer and baseball at Kennedy until about four years ago, said he entered the gym where students were playing basketball after school to see an 11th-grade male student lying on the floor.

“I went over and checked his vitals. He continued to breathe but it was still a labored breathing and he passed out and he stopped breathing. I shook him and spoke to him and then he came back,” Mr. Hill, 51, said in a phone interview on Oct. 29.

Then, the teacher said the student stopped breathing again. And this time, he had no pulse.

Mr. Hill said he called for a defibrillator and immediately began CPR. He was able to partially revive the student but said his eyes were still unfocused and he was not fully conscious. To keep him from choking, Mr. Hill said he rolled the student onto his side.

An ambulance arrived several minutes later and it was only then that Mr. Hill said he fully grasped what had happened.

“It wasn’t until afterwards — when the ETS workers had come in and they took over — that I … got nervous. I realized I was the difference between him living and maybe dying,” Mr. Hill said.

Mr. Hill said he has been a coach since 1971, and had never dealt with a situation where someone’s heart stopped. He said there were about 40 to 50 students in the gym, plus a coach and another teacher.

“People react differently under pressure and I’m the one that responded,” he said.

When he returned to school, Mr. Hill said the administrators at the school did not thank him but teachers, as well as the boy’s girlfriend, expressed their gratitude.

“The nicest thing was today [Oct. 29] the boy’s girlfriend came up to me and grabbed me by the hand with tears in her eyes and thanked me,” Mr. Hill recalled.

Although the student was still in the hospital on Oct. 29, Mr. Hill said he was recovering and undergoing tests to determine the cause of the incident.

Ottawa student saves father’s life with CPR

When Scott Blostein recognized that his father needed CPR, he knew how to react...

When Scott Blostein’s younger sister woke him up at 5 a.m., one winter morning, he knew something was seriously wrong.

The eighteen-year-old Ottawa student was sound asleep when his sister Amy ran frantically into his room. “Dad isn’t waking up,” she exclaimed.

A few minutes earlier, 12-year old Amy, had woken up with a headache and gone to see her parents. Her mom, Margo, told her to go get some aspirin. While trying to get back to sleep, Margo noticed her husband, Alan, was making odd noises and something just wasn’t right.

“He was turning blue,” Margo says. “I jumped out of bed and tried to shake him, telling him to wake up.”

Nothing was working.

That’s when Margo called for Amy to get Scott, who was sleeping downstairs.

“I got up right away,” says Scott, who ran upstairs to his parents’ room where he found his father lying face down on the bed. “I rolled him over and right away I knew what I had to do,” he says.

Scott and his 15-year old brother Matt, who had woken from the commotion, moved their dad onto the floor while their mother called 9-1-1.

Scott checked for vitals - there weren’t any.

“I was kind of in shock,” he says. “I went into CPR right away.”

Scott received lifesaving training in his physical education class through the ACT High School CPR Program at Brookfield High School in Ottawa. Scott says this background prepared him well.

“When I was doing CPR on my dad, I was thinking of all the training I got,” he says. “It came naturally.”

Following arrival of the paramedics and transport to hospital, it was later confirmed that Alan had suffered a cardiac arrest. He has since made a full recovery and is forever grateful to his quick-acting son.

“When I think back to what happened, I’m so proud and grateful that my son saved my life,” says Alan, who urges everyone to learn CPR. “It could be you saving your father’s life, you just never know.”

For Scott, the lifesaving power of CPR is something he will never forget. “The biggest honour was giving life back to the man who gave me life.”

The ACT High School CPR Program was made possible in Scott Blostein’s school thanks to generous community and provincial-level support which enabled the donation of mannequins, teacher training and curriculum resources. The lead community partner in Ottawa is the Kiwanis Club of Ottawa. The print partner which donates the printing of the student manual is the Ottawa Citizen. Provincial partners of the program are the Government of Ontario, Hydro One, and The Ontario Trillium Foundation.

The Advanced Coronary Treatment (ACT) Foundation is an award-winning, national charitable organization dedicated to establishing CPR in high schools across Canada. ACT raises funds to donate mannequins, teacher training, manuals and other materials to schools, and guides schools in program set-up and long-term sustainability. Teachers teach CPR to their students as a regular part of the curriculum. More than 1,500,000 youth have been trained in CPR through this lifesaving program to date.

Core partners supporting the program in Ontario and throughout Canada are companies in the research-based pharmaceutical industry: AstraZeneca Canada, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada, Pfizer Canada and sanofi-aventis. They provide ACT’s sustaining funding and are committed to the Foundation’s national goal of promoting health and empowering Canadians to save lives.

(Published by the ACT Foundation)

Aspirin

A recent AARP bulletin published new guidelines for daily aspirin.

Here is a section of their article:

"The aspirin-a-day controversy erupted publicly in March when a 10-year study of nearly 30,000 adults ages 50 to 75 without known heart disease found that a daily aspirin didn’t offer any discernible protection. The group taking aspirin had cardiovascular disease at the same rate as those taking a placebo. Moreover, the study—published in the Journal of the American Medical Association—reported that taking a daily aspirin (100 mg) almost doubled the risk of dangerous internal bleeding.

"The panel also recommended that people over 80 not take aspirin at all because of bleeding risk.

"For the first time, the panel also broke down its advice by gender, recommending against daily aspirin use in women under 55 and men under 45.

"Is it right for you?

"So, should you take a daily aspirin or not? The answer is not quite as simple as doctors previously thought. Aspirin, they say, can still be a lifesaving drug, but it’s not for everyone.

"For reasons researchers don’t fully understand, aspirin seems to provide different benefits for men and women.

"In men, aspirin can prevent heart attacks but seems to have no effect on strokes, says Michael LeFevre, M.D., a member of the task force that wrote the new guidelines and a professor of family medicine at the University of Missouri. Conversely, he says, aspirin appears to help women avoid strokes but not heart attacks.

"The new recommendations suggest that aspirin will be most beneficial to:

• "men between 45 and 79 who have a high risk for heart attacks;
• "women between 55 and 79 who are at high risk for strokes."

The full article can be found at http://www.aarp.org/health/drugs-supplements/info-04-2010/can_an_aspirin_do_more_harm_than_good.html?cmp=NLC-WBLTR-TEST-10810-F1-71&USEG_ID=4529196825

Bob

I just heard a new excuse

I thought I had heard of all the reasons given by people for not being willing to learn CPR. But Christine Lind - SLICC's Director of Skidaway Operations - shared one with me yesterday that still has my head shaking.

The person had told Christine that they didn't want to learn CPR because they didn't want to someday have the responsibility for whether a person lived or died.

What the person was missing is an understanding of the purpose of CPR: it keeps the heart and brain alive so that when the ambulance gets there, the people with the drugs and electricity can try to restart the heart. Refusing to perform CPR means that the victim's chance of recovering remain about one-in-twenty. Refusing to perform CPR also means that if the ambulance crew is able to restart the heart, the odds that the victim will have significant neurological damage will be significantly higher.

CPR is a win-win act: if you perform CPR, you have preserved the playing field for the paramedics who arrive in the ambulance. If the patient survives with major brain function intact, you were part of a team that saved a life; if the patient doesn't survive, it wasn't your fault: you preserved the playing field, but not all cardiac arrest victims can be saved.

CPR by itself doesn't save a life...it's one link in the chain of survival. Refusal to perform CPR doesn't remove a person from having the responsibility for whether a victim lives or dies. Just the opposite is true: refusal to perform CPR is a conscious decision that assures that the outcome will be worse than it might have been.

Bob

Another save...

Teen goes into cardiac arrest after seizure at WW-P North

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Alex Zdan

STAFF WRITER

PLAINSBORO -- Fast-responding EMTs and police treated a 15-year-old student who went into cardiac arrest at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North Monday, police said.

Emergency responders were called to the school at 1:01 p.m. after a male student in line at gym class collapsed and began having a seizure, police said.

Two minutes later, police and EMTs arrived to find the gym teacher performing CPR on the student, who was in cardiac arrest. They used a defibrillator to restart the teen's heart, and he began breathing on his own, police said.

The student was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick for further treatment.

A counterpoint to Miki's death...

[If you are not familiar with Miki's death, visit www.slicc.org ]

Miguel Garcia 'continues to improve' after suffering heart-attack during Spanish league game

By MATT FORTUNE

Spanish second division side UD Salamanca have released a very positive statement about the health of player Miguel Garcia who 'died' for almost half a minute during Sunday's match against Real Betis.

Garcia collapsed in the centre circle after suffering a heart attack early in the second half. The 31-year-old was revived on the pitch before being rushed to Salamanca's University Hospital, where the club say his condition continues to improve following surgery.

Team physician Jose Ignacio Garrido said after the match that the player was legally dead for 25 seconds. He added that his playing days were almost certainly over.

Cardiac arrest: Salamanca's Miguel Garcia collapsed after suffering a heart-attack during a league match in Spain on Sunday

The statement on the club website said: 'The health status of Miguel Garcia continues to evolve successfully. He had a good night and this morning medical services at the hospital informed UD Salamanca that his vital signs are normal. Miguel Garcia will remain at the Intensive Care Unit.

'Miguel Garcia remains stable and recovering from cardiac arrest suffered in the match.'

'UD Salamanca want to show their sincere appreciation to the medical services at the hospital and to the medical services of the club, Real Betis and the Salamanca Red Cross for their rapid and efficient intervention.

'Similarly, the UD Salamanca wish to thanked the media for exemplary behavior, concern and understanding for the sad event at the stadium Helmántico.'

Betis team doctor Tomas Calero's diagnosis over Garcia's future was clear after assisting in saving the player's life.

'If he had a heart attack at his age, he can't compete in elite-level sport,' Calero was quoted as saying in El Pais.

Panic: Players, management and medical staff were left in tears as Garcia was treated and then rushed to hospital

The incident left players stunned, with many breaking down in tears.

Garcia's collapse is not the first time a player has suffered a heart attack during a La Liga game, and Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport hit out at the effectiveness of the medical checks carried out in Spain in their edition on Monday.

Been here before: Sevilla defender Antonio Puerta died in 2007 aged just 22 after collapsing during a match

Antonio Puerta, a rising Spanish star, died of cardiac arrest at the age of 22 while playing for Sevilla in 2007.

While not on the pitch, another Spaniard, 26-year-old Espanyol captain Dani Jarque, suffered a fatal heart attack last year. And just a few months ago, a similar accident claimed the life of Jordi Pitarque, a player from the Catalonian third division.

Real Madrid's Ruben de la Red also suffered a similar episode during a game two years ago and never returned to play.

As a result of the previous tragedies, a defibrillator is a legal requirement at all professional Spanish matches, as well as any sports centre in the countries.