Shropshire Star

Star comment: Heartfelt thanks has message

Here’s a life or death question for you. Somebody is dying in front of you. Their life could be saved – and you could be the person to do it.

Published

Are you up to it? Would you know what to do?

Painter and decorator Nigel Haseley did know what to do when he found himself in that very circumstance.

The setting and scenario was a commonplace one, down at the pub.

Stuart Nadal’s heart stopped as he ordered a drink at the Cock Hotel in Wellington, and he collapsed. Nigel, who happened to have called into the pub with friends, gave him CPR until paramedics took over.

He had recently received first aid training at work, and so he knew how to give him chest compressions.

Stuart was lucky that at his time of crisis there was somebody on hand to give him life-saving aid.

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“Thanks is never enough,” he says. That is actually right. Today’s heartfelt thank-you will not save somebody tomorrow in a situation in which the dice roll somewhat differently, with bystanders helpless and ineffectual, and no community defibrillator – equipment which gives a high energy shock to restore normal heart rhythm – available, and nobody around with the confidence to use it even if it was.

Every second is vital. With a cardiac arrest, the heart has stopped pumping blood around the body and to the brain. The key signs are that they have fallen unconscious and are not breathing, or are not breathing normally.

Somebody has to do something, and very quickly, as otherwise death is at hand.

Nigel was the somebody who did something at the Cock Hotel.

But the sad general picture is only one person in 10 survives a cardiac arrest, because of lack of knowledge of how to perform CPR and the lack of available community defibrillators.

No wonder the British Heart Foundation has a campaign to increase the numbers.

As it happens, one has been launched only at the weekend at the cafe in Bowring Park in Wellington.

There are others dotted round and about Shropshire and Mid Wales

Look too at the BHF information about responding to cardiac arrest. Because the very worst thing you can do in that situation is absolutely nothing.