Prince credits CPR training for heroism
UMass Dartmouth baseball coach saves life of young athlete
The thought that popped into Bob Prince’s mind when he first saw Donte Greene was something along the lines of, “Oh boy.”
It was Super Bowl weekend, and 12-year-old Donte’s sixth-grade AAU basketball team matched up with the team Prince’s son, Harry, had recently joined in a tournament at Penn State. Prince, the UMass Dartmouth head baseball coach, knew some of the best competition in the country played at this tournament. But he wasn’t quite prepared for the seeming physical mismatch as Harry defended the bulky, 6-foot-1 Greene. Prince couldn’t help but send a picture of the two to his wife as a sort of comedic relief.
Prince knew his son was a competitor and he would play tough. He also knew Donte would likely have a good game, which he did by scoring at will despite showing clear signs of discomfort that appeared to come from breathing through a mask.
What nobody knew was that come the fourth quarter — after a room-hushing collapse, about 10 minutes of CPR and the use of an AED — a college baseball coach would help save Donte’s life.
With a mother’s intuition, Barbara Palmer-Greene knew something was wrong with her son all game long. Donte had played above-average basketball since he was 6, and he never suffered conditioning problems to the extent he showed that Saturday. Had she known her son would lose his breath and his pulse from a previously undetected heart condition, they never would have left their home in Westchester, N.Y., for the tournament.
She and her husband immediately rushed the court when a visibly bothered Donte took a knee in the middle of the action. She didn’t get to him until after he collapsed, face-down, and garnered the concern of everyone in the gym as he laid motionless.
No first responders were staffed for the tournament, but Prince has been CPRcertified for years. Donte was flipped over, and Prince did as he was taught: Check for response or a pulse; no response. Check for breathing; no breaths. Begin compressions.
Even as he locked in on trying get Donte’s heartbeat back, Prince remembered hearing Barbara crying, repeating “don’t let my baby die.” Anyone 100 yards away would hear it with how quiet the gym came to. He’ll likely never forget it, just as Barbara will likely never forget the 10 or so minutes of Donte’s temporary lifelessness.
To say it was a scary scene puts it mildly.
“It was a pretty chaotic scene at that point in time,” Prince said. “He was laying there unresponsive for a good 10 minutes, and all I could hear in the background was his mom. … Luckily I had really good training by our training staff, that voice inside your head type of thing was going on with me where I could hear our trainer Dan walking me through the situation.”
Added Barbara: “If you know basketball tournaments, there’s nothing but noise. When he went down, it was all silent.”
Prince was joined by Dr. Alicia Morgan, another parent from Maryland who assisted the whole way. The two of them hooked up the AED, and Prince’s own heart dropped when it sounded off “heartbeat undetected.” They continued to give breaths and compressions along with the use of the AED, until paramedics arrived and used their own equipment to get a faint heartbeat and light breathing from Donte.
It was one of the longest 10 minutes of Prince’s life as he performed CPR in a real-life situation for the first time. It still makes him emotional. Donte was airlifted and stabilized at a local hospital.
“It was one of those moments that it felt like it went by in no time, but it also felt like it went on forever,” Prince said. “In my mind, I can’t let this kid die. … Do whatever you can to figure this out was my mindset, and just keep going. If I didn’t have that training, I would’ve been standing there watching. Obviously, it wouldn’t have turned out well.”
The American Heart Association says there are about 475,000 annual deaths from cardiac arrest. Heart disease ranks as the leading cause of death in the United States. About 90% of the people who suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital die. Administering CPR immediately afterward can double or triple the chances of survival, but as of 2017, only 46.1% of those cardiac arrests are responded to from bystanders.
Luckily, Donte is one of the 12% of people who survived, and he’s part of an even more exclusive group with how well he’s recovered. At the hospital, doctors told Barbara that many patients that didn’t have a heartbeat as long as Donte ended up with brain damage. One patient around the same age lost his vision on top of it.
By the time people came to visit Donte, though, he was already alert in his bed, talking in a normal state. He’s restricted from physical activity for at least six months, but he’s playing video games, interacting and learning as if nothing happened. For Barbara, that is a miracle, and she preaches the value of CPR training and access to an AED so others can provide the same miracle awarded to her son.
“I’m just thankful that they were both (Prince and Dr. Morgan) there,” she said. “If they were not there, my son would not be here. … I definitely want to advocate for CPR (training) and for AED machines to be at all sites because you never know what could happen.
Many community members around Prince have already reached out to admire him and say they’ve registered to get the certification. He constantly thinks what it would have been like if what happened to Donte happened to his own kids, so he is appreciative to inspire others to get the certification.
“To have that skill set that could save someone else’s life, that’s invaluable,” Prince said.
“Take two hours or plus of your time, and it’s a gift to everyone else.”