Society honours pair for life-saving actions
Lifesaving honours have been awarded to the husband and a neighbour of Scotland Rugby Union’s first woman president Dee Bradbury after she ‘died’ at a barbecue.
The quick actions of Dee’s husband Nick and neighbour Dr Lindsay Vare were celebrated at a ceremony in Ardchattan on Friday when the pair received certificates from The Royal Humane Society for saving her life – with help from a community-funded defibrillator.
Dee and her husband Nick were sitting on the balcony of their Loch Etive home on the evening of June 18 this year when she suddenly slumped forward making a choking sound. She had stopped breathing and had no pulse.
Nick, who dialled 999 and started CPR, was alone until he heard his neighbours’ car pull up and shouted for help.
Dr Lindsay Vare, who works at The Scottish Association for Marine Science at Dunbeg, and John Howe dashed to get the nearest defibrillator fastened to the wall at Bonawe telephone exchange where vital time was saved because the code number to unlock the box was displayed on its front.
Once back at the scene of Dee’s cardiac arrest, Lindsay connected the defibrillator and restarted her heart and took over CPR from Nick for more than 30 minutes until paramedics arrived.
Dee, who stepped down from her role as SRU president this year, was then taken to Oban hospital before being helicoptered to the Golden Jubilee
‘Thank goodness for the defibrillator, for Nick and for good neighbours...’
Hospital in Clydebank where she was fitted with an internal defibrillator.
Three weeks later she was hospitalised again, this time in Edinburgh in ‘excruciating pain’ after the lead of the device had burrowed its way out of her heart and embedded itself into her chest wall.
But six months on she says she is now feeling ‘perfectly fine’ and ‘incredibly thankful’ for her life.
‘I’ve had tests and everything is working. They could find no reason why my heart stopped.
‘Thank goodness for the defibrillator, for Nick and for good neighbours. I don’t know anything about the night in question because I was dead but from what I’ve been told everything just slotted into place from the neighbours coming home just when they did, to them getting the defibrillator to me so quickly and the ambulance only taking minutes to arrive. It must have been local,’ she said.
And she added: ‘I went a bit bonkers afterwards because of the oxygen deprivation and still have problems with memory loss and certain mobility skills but other than that I’m fine.’
The defibrillator that helped saved Dee’s life is one of four machines in the Ardchattan area co-ordinated by the community council, in particular by community councillor Tony Dalgaty who took on the task that began in 2015.
Mr Dalgaty said: ‘Ardchattan Community Council first discussed defibrillators about five years ago. At that time we didn’t know much about them but slowly and surely we got there with the help of funding from a variety of sources. Each unit cost about £1,600. We’ve installed four of them so we raised quite a bit of money. We are just so pleased to have done something positive.’
The other three defibrillators are at Spencer Court in Benderloch, North Connel Village Hall and the Forestry Land Scotland workshop at Barcaldine.
Funding included support from Taynuilt Medical Practice, Scottish Sea Farms and help from the British Heart Foundation.
Training sessions on using a defibrillator have already been held in the community, with more planned in the New Year.
Dee’s husband Nick said: ‘We’re just so thankful for the defibrillator being there, this box on the wall I always saw and never, never thought we’d be depending on. It would have been a completely different outcome without it.’
Vice Lord Lieutenant of
Argyll and Bute Andrew Campbell, who presented the certificates, said: ‘This is quite the happiest event I have been involved in.’
UK-wide concerns about defibrillators being stolen mean it is often the ambulance service that gives the unlocking code to the person making a 999 call in the event of a cardiac arrest but because of Ardchattan's remoteness, the community council decided to display it on the front of the box to save valuable time and give the best chance of survival.
Dee added: ‘The defib is the most useful piece of kit we have in this area and it absolutely makes me furious to hear about them being stolen because you can’t use them on someone that’s not dead.’