Saskatoon StarPhoenix

CPR knowledge helps woman save two lives in two months

- JENNIFER ACKERMAN jackerman@postmedia.com

Mallory McCormick has been CPR certified for 10 years, but she never imagined she would ever actually need to use it.

That changed two months ago when her boyfriend, Iain Fyfe, woke up in the middle of the night gasping for breath.

“We were sleeping and he started going into heart failure,” said McCormick. “I don’t really know what my thought process was, but I just knew something wasn’t right and something else needed to be happening.”

That was when she called for her roommate, dialed 911 and started chest compressio­ns.

Fyfe doesn’t remember anything, but says he was told by McCormick that he was barely breathing and began turning blue. When an ambulance arrived within three minutes, the paramedics shocked his heart, stabilized him and took him to the hospital.

“I was obviously very thankful when I heard what happened and the fact that she knew to react immediatel­y and not just panic,” said Fyfe, who credits McCormick’s training for helping save his life.

Neither of them expected something like this to happen, especially to Fyfe, an athletic 29-year-old who won the Queen City Marathon just last year.

“It’s weird,” McCormick said. “After Iain, I kept joking about how like, ‘Oh ya, once I get two lives, then I get to call myself a super hero,’ but I only said that because I thought the chances of it happening again are just so (low).”

But less than a month later, McCormick and Fyfe were hiking near Fernie, B.C., when the couple came across a woman who had collapsed on the trail.

Showing similar symptoms to Fyfe, McCormick jumped into action yet again.

“Apparently, the first thing out of my mouth was ‘Oh, bleep, not again,’” said McCormick.

But this time she was able to react even quicker since it happened during the day — after her morning coffee — and because now she knew what to expect.

After four or five chest compressio­ns, the woman was semiconsci­ous and breathing again. By the time she left with paramedics about 15 minutes later, McCormick said she seemed back to normal.

“I’m lucky and those people are lucky too that I did get my training and was able to react. And I think the second hiker was even a little luckier that she got now an experience­d CPR person,” said McCormick.

McCormick first got certified when she was in college for early childhood education. She has had to re-certify every three years since to continue working in the childcare field and is currently the child care program supervisor at Roots & Wings Childcare Centre. Even though she hasn’t had to use her CPR skills at work, clearly they have not gone to waste.

For Fyfe, doctors say they may never know why he went into heart failure that day, but he now has an implantabl­e cardiovert­er defibrilla­tor, which will jolt his heart if it ever happens again.

“Be thankful for every day you’ve got because you never know what might happen,” said Fyfe, who is putting getting re-certified for CPR on his to-do list in light of recent events.

According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, there are approximat­ely 40,000 cardiac arrests every year. Eight in 10 cardiac arrests occur in public places or at home and only one in 10 survive a cardiac arrest that happens outside a hospital. Performing CPR combined with the use of an automated external defibrilla­tor within the first few minutes, doubles the chance of survival.

“You never know when you’re actually going to need it, whether you’re sleeping with your loved one or out on a trail or even just walking down the street,” said McCormick. “It literally is life-saving and I will never let my certificat­ion lapse. I tell everyone now, ‘Go get it.’”

 ?? TROY FLEECE/POSTMEDIA ?? Mallory McCormick, right, saved her boyfriend Iain Fyfe’s life by performing CPR on him about two months ago when he woke in the middle of the night in heart failure and having trouble breathing.
TROY FLEECE/POSTMEDIA Mallory McCormick, right, saved her boyfriend Iain Fyfe’s life by performing CPR on him about two months ago when he woke in the middle of the night in heart failure and having trouble breathing.

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