If the fire brigade hadn’t arrived, I would have died
As Rob Wight looks forward to celebrating his golden wedding anniversary with wife Margaret later this month, he knows he is lucky to be alive.
In January this year, Rob, now 72, suffered a cardiac arrest in his home.
The local fire crew arrived just four minutes after his family dialled 999.
Rob, of Hawick, said: “I had gone into the living room to put on the news. I don’t know what happened next but Maggie said she came through and realised something was wrong.
“She shouted for my son and they could see I wasn’t breathing.
“When they dialled 999, the operator instructed my son to start CPR.
“Within four minutes the fire brigade had arrived and took over. They intubated me and used a defibrillator to shock my heart three or four times to get it going again.”
As the fire crew worked on Rob, a paramedic practitioner arrived, followed minutes later by an ambulance crew.
They rushed Rob to Borders General Hospital, where he remained in intensive care for days.
He was then transferred to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary to have a machine fitted in his chest that will restart his heart should he suffer a cardiac arrest in the future.
Rob, a former boss of knitwear firm Peter Scott, said: “If the fire brigade hadn’t arrived when they did, I wouldn’t be here now. The defibrillator was the difference between life and death for me.”
Margaret, 70, added: “We owe Rob’s life to that fire crew.”