Carolyn saved her husband with first aid learned at Brownies
CAROLYN BJELAN was drying her hair one morning last May when she heard a sudden thud downstairs. ‘It was especially loud, even through the noise of the hairdryer,’ she says.
Her first thought was that her husband, Jovan, 55, who runs a carpentry and joinery business and had been renovating their home in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, had fallen off a ladder.
Hurrying downstairs to check on him, the sight that met Carolyn, 52, made her gasp: Jovan was lying unconscious on the floor.
‘His chest wasn’t moving and no air was coming from his mouth or nose. I called out his name. No answer.’
Carolyn checked his pulse and, finding nothing, rang 999 and started CPR.
She had first learned the technique 25 years ago when she became a Brownie Guide leader, and over the years she’d been on refresher courses.
As her husband lay unconscious, she had no time to be emotional and pushed down hard on his chest.
‘I didn’t cry, scream, yell or panic. I just got on with what I knew I had to do — keep my husband alive until the ambulance arrived,’ says Carolyn.
Jovan had suffered a cardiac arrest, where the heart stops pumping blood around the body after the heart’s electrical system malfunctions. This may be due to abnormal or irregular heart rhythms called arrhythmias, or as a result of a heart attack, where one of the coronary arteries becomes blocked and the heart muscle begins to die.
After a cardiac arrest, the brain and body are starved of oxygenated blood; death or permanent brain damage can occur within four to six minutes.
By doing CPR, you are taking over the role of the heart, physically pushing blood around the body and to the brain to try to prevent damage.
As Carolyn pushed her husband’s chest, she put her phone on loudspeaker and the ambulance service asked questions about Jovan’s condition. Not long after, two paramedics ran through the open front door — she’d instinctively unlocked it on her way downstairs — and took over.
JOVAN was in a critical condition. He was whisked by Yorkshire Air Ambulance to Leeds General Infirmary. It was only as he was flown away that Carolyn (who wasn’t allowed to travel with him) let herself break down.
‘It all hit me. The adrenaline had taken over before, but now I was able to see clearly that I might lose him,’ she recalls.
Shockingly, if you suffer a cardiac arrest outside of hospital — as 30,000 people in the UK do each year — you have a less than 10 per cent chance of surviving.
And every minute without CPR or defibrillation (where an electric shock is delivered to the chest to get the heart beating normally) reduces a patient’s chance of survival by between 7 and 10 per cent.
But if CPR is performed on a cardiac arrest patient before an ambulance arrives, their chance of survival doubles.
When Jovan reached hospital, doctors said he would surely have died without Carolyn’s efforts.
‘If I hadn’t known what I was doing, Jovan could have died in our home,’ says Carolyn.
CPR is vital. It gets air in and out of the lungs and helps the heart squeeze blood to the brain, explains Dr Adrian Boyle, a consultant emergency physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.
Of all the countries in the world, Norway is among the best at bystander CPR — it’s performed in 73per cent of cases, compared with only 44 per cent in Britain. As a result, the survival rate in Norway is at 25per cent, compared with less than 10 per cent here.
Though Dr Boyle recommends always going on a course with a qualified instructor, he stresses that the technique is not difficult to learn.
‘CPR is a simple, easy intervention that can sometimes save lives. As many people as possible need to be taught how to do it,’ he says.
‘The main reasons people don’t intervene are fear of getting it wrong, fear of making the situation worse, or even of being sued. But once it is learned, it’s very easy to do.’
Basic CPR doesn’t involve mouth-to-mouth resuscitation — chest compressions alone can buy enough time to save a life.
Where possible, you should also use a defibrillator, says Dr Boyle — automated versions of these, which provide verbal instructions about when to give chest compressions, are found in many public places.
People are now being urged to learn first aid skills such as CPR in case they are caught up in a terror attack. Earlier this month, a team of military and civilian doctors launched a new guide, citizenAID (available as an app or book) to guide people through first aid in the event of a bomb attack or shooting, and it includes an instruction to start CPR.
AKEY problem, says Dr Boyle, is that teaching CPR is not mandatory in schools in the UK. In Denmark, the bystander rate for CPR has risen from 25 per cent to 65per cent in the eight years it has been taught in schools, and the survival rate has more than doubled. The technique is also taught in schools in Norway.
Thanks to his wife’s training, Jovan was one of the lucky ones. He stayed in hospital for a week and an internal cardiac defibrillator was fitted to his heart.
The device can shock the heart into starting if he ever suffers a cardiac arrest again.
Jovan has no recollection of what happened to him when he had the cardiac arrest, nor have doctors ever found out what caused it.
‘There was no sign of an existing heart condition or arrhythmia and he was fit and healthy,’ says Carolyn. ‘That’s what was so scary — this could happen to anyone, fit or not.’
Six months on, Jovan is working again and has just regained his driving licence.
‘In the aftermath, I went into shock and felt very traumatised,’ says Carolyn. ‘But I’m telling our story to make more people aware of how important CPR is.
‘Knowing CPR can literally mean the difference between life and death. So many people don’t know how to do it, but it’s so easy to learn and I wish more businesses, schools and organisations would offer courses.’
Lucy Wilkinson, a senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, adds: ‘We need as many people as possible to learn this life-saving skill to give them the confidence to step in and try to save a life when they see someone suffer a cardiac arrest.
‘We’d also urge all secondary schools across the UK to apply for our free training kits and help create a nation of life-savers.’
Carolyn couldn’t agree more. ‘I’m so thankful I knew what I was doing that day,’ she says.
‘The training I had means my childhood sweetheart is still at my side.’