Pensioner’s hunt to find kind-heart who stopped and helped save his life
APENSIONER is searching the passer-by who saved life after he collapsed in street from a heart attack.
Malcolm Robinson has already tracked down one Good Samaritan, who provided CPR when he suffered cardiac arrest so severe his chances of survival were later revealed as no more than ten per cent.
In a stroke of luck even greater than Lottery odds, Judy Lewis, from Aldridge, a former nurse at London’s National Heart Hospital, was present when the 69-year-old battled death in Digbeth.
A young man who assisted Judy during the emergency on Easter Saturday, April 15, 2017, has yet to be identified.
The narrow escape has inspired Malcolm, from Sutton Coldfield, to set up CPR Counts, an organisation that provides courses in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Through its work, the retired physiotherapist hopes many others will be saved.
Recollections of his fight for life are vague, but a text message to wife Ann, who planned to meet him in Birmingham, is a constant reminder.
“Don’t get bus to town,” Malcolm told her. “I am coming home. Will tell why when I see you.”
By that time, Ann was already on the bus and, concerned, rang her husband.
“I told her I had an ache in my chest and was feeling very cold and thought I should abandon the walk,” Malcolm recalls. “By the time Ann reached me in the city centre I was feeling much better and decided to carry on as planned.” The heart attack struck minutes later. “I suddenly keeled over on to my right side on the pavement,” says Malcolm, who teaches a Tai Chi linked exercise known as Chi Kung. “Ann thought I had tripped, but soon realised I wasn’t responding.
“The fact that my tongue was lolling out to one side caused further alarm.
“By now a group of onlookers had gathered to witness the scene. One had phoned for an ambulance but no one was offering further assistance.
“Then suddenly Judy was there. Ann was trying to rouse me by shaking my shoulders and Judy said, ‘Don’t do that, he’s had a cardiac arrest’,
“Judy immediately took control of the situation, got me on to my back and started CPR and closed my fixedopen eyes to prevent burst blood vessels.
“Another bystander, still untraced, offered to help. Between them, they kept my circulation and breathing going for the 20 minutes it took for an ambulance to appear. The ambulance crew wasted no time in stripping me for his the nearly bare by using scissors to completely destroy my jacket, jumper, shirt and trousers.
“They punched a hole into my left shin to insert some sort of line for injecting something into me and kept me alive until I got to hospital. They also used a defibrillator on me three times. Judy had left her coat over me before departing, leaving the paramedics to carry on with my resuscitation.”
Malcolm is aware of the debt he owes Judy. If not for her, he would be dead. She visited him in City Hospital, but all attempts to locate her first aid assistant have hit a brick wall.
“Without Judy’s presence on day one, and knowing that no one else at the scene was making any efforts, or had the knowledge, to resuscitate me, I would not be alive,” says Malcolm. “It’s as simple as that. We have now learned that the chances of Judy being there at all were very slim, but how come she was the right person at the right time, considering that a moment earlier she would have passed by and not seen me in trouble?”
All attempts to locate her first aid assistant have so far been in vain.
Malcolm’s children have tried, and failed, to find him through Facebook.
Malcolm wants the mystery man, along with Judy and medics who treated him, at his 70th birthday party on December 8.
“I know nothing about him,” says Malcolm. “He came over and had some first aid training. He said if Judy told him what to do, he would help her. My wife thinks he was in his early 30s, but that’s a complete guess.”
Now Malcolm, who underwent a triple bypass operation last August, wants others to have the same CPR knowledge as Judy. His first CPR Counts training session, staged at Good Hope Hospital, Sutton Coldfield, attracted 37 people.
Passing on the knowledge was Mike Bennett, lead resuscitation officer for Birmingham Community Health Care NHS Trust.
“I started feeling the need to give something back by improving other victims’ chances of survival,” says Malcolm. “Don’t imagine, like me, that it couldn’t happen to you either. I had had no previous symptoms whatsoever, I was very fit and I was on a very heart-friendly diet.
“Cardiac arrests can hit anyone of any age at any time, hence the need for bystanders who know the life-saving drill.”
For more Counts, go to com information on CPR cprcounts.wordpress.