Michael Urban
Republican & Herald, Pottsville, Pa.
(TNS)
DEER LAKE — When Grace Ortiz was offered a first aid and CPR course at Blue Mountain High School, she didn’t want to take it.
She was looking for an easier elective course during her junior year, but learning to play the piano was the only other option that fit her schedule, so she reluctantly signed up for the half-year CPR class.
She earned a 96, though, and in May was happy to show her mom, Rachal Ortiz, the Red Cross certification she’d received.
“Good job,” Rachal told her, but neither had any idea how important that class would soon turn out to be.
Six days later, during Memorial Day weekend, the family was getting ready for bed in their Deer Lake home when Rachal felt light-headed. She thought she was going to pass out.
JEMS: Increasing Bystander CPR Confidence and Knowledge
She sat on their couch in the living room hoping the feeling would pass. When she tried to stand up, she collapsed on the floor. Her breathing had stopped and her face was quickly turning purple.
Her daughter Marina dialed 9-1-1 and Grace, then 16, instinctively began performing the CPR technique she had just learned in school.
She did chest compressions and delivered rescue breaths to her mom, who for the first time in her life had suffered a sudden cardiac failure.
For several minutes Grace continued working on her mom as they waited for an ambulance to arrive. After she grew exhausted from the effort of it. Rachal’s fiancée, Kevin Blessing, continued the compressions until the paramedic crew reached the door.
As Rachal was carried to the ambulance, the seriousness of the situation started to hit Grace. As the responders worked to resuscitate Rachal, Grace didn’t know if what she had done had worked, or if her mom was still alive. But a neighbor told her that she saw Rachal conscious in the ambulance before it left for St. Luke’s University Hospital in Bethlehem.
For a week Rachal, then 48, remained hospitalized in the intensive care unit before being sent home. During her stay she had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD, placed in her chest. An ICD is a small battery-powered device that detects and stops irregular heartbeats, also called arrhythmias. It continuously checks her heartbeat and delivers electric shocks, when needed, to restore a regular heart rhythm.
She has since recovered from the ordeal, with her energy level having mostly rebounded, allowing her to return to her office job and her regular life, she said.
“I feel good,” she said. “I feel close to normal.”
Without her daughter’s quick and effective actions, though, she likely would have died, doctors told her.
“I don’t know how she did it without freaking out, but Grace did everything so flawlessly,” Rachal said. “The doctors said it was a miracle. I’m so lucky to be here. I’m so thankful.
“I told Grace, ‘You were my first born, and I gave you life, and now you saved my life.’ She’s a great kid, and a strong kid.”
Timely intervention
An immediate delivery of CPR by a bystander following cardiac arrest can be crucial in improving the patient’s outcome, said Dr. Evan Joye, a cardiologist with St. Luke’s University Health Network.
It happens far too infrequently, though, because too few are trained to perform the procedure, he said.
What happened with the Ortiz family should show schools the value of offering such a course, he said.
“More schools should be including it in their curriculum,” he said.
Even those who know the right actions to take after they witness a cardiac event need to perform CPR properly, though, a difficult task in such a stressful moment, especially if it involves a loved one, Joye said.
‘Inspiring’ heroic actions
“What this girl did was a clear-cut demonstration of heroics, and a wonderful example for people to follow,” the doctor said. “It’s inspiring.”
Grace, now 17 and a Blue Mountain senior, said that she did not think twice before helping her mom, and did not consider the consequences at that moment.
Instead, she remained calm and did just what she’d been trained to do, she said.
She encourages others — including students — to learn CPR themselves.
“You might think that you’ll never need it, but you never know,” she said.
Doctors told Rachal, now 49, that dehydration may have been a factor in her cardiac episode, with her low electrolyte level causing an electrical imbalance in her heart.
She remembers only bits and pieces of the incident, but understands well how remarkable her daughter’s actions were, and how fortunate she is that Blue Mountain offered its CPR course to her.
Few schools offer CPR
“I think everybody should know CPR,” she said. “I’m a prime example that it works.”
While half-year first aid-CPR courses such as Blue Mountain’s are uncommon for Pennsylvania schools to offer, CPR is one of the credentials recognized by the state Department of Education to meet graduation requirements, so many schools offer training.
That instruction typically lasts for one class period and teaches the “hands-only” version of CPR without rescue breaths, but it increases the chances that when someone has a cardiac emergency in public or at home that someone will be able to help them, said Jeffrey Salvatore, vice-president of community impact for the Philadelphia and southern New Jersey chapter of the American Heart Association.
Nationally bystanders give CPR to a cardiac victim about 40 percent of the time, but Pennsylvania’s rate is much lower at about 25 percent, a number that hopefully will rise as more recent graduates learn the procedure, Salvatore said.
When CPR is administered promptly and correctly by a bystander before medical personnel arrive, their survival rate is three times higher, he said. Every minute of delay reduces the patient’s survival odds by 10 percent, he said.
Easy to request training
Peter Brown is executive director of the American Red Cross Pennsylvania Rivers Chapter, which includes Schuylkill County, and said the organization trains people locally in first aid, CPR, and how to use an AED machine in such situations. Businesses, school districts, churches and other organizations can request such training from the Red Cross, and the classes help save lives, he said.
“When an emergency happens, having someone in the room who is trained is huge,” he said. “We’d like to see everyone certified.”
That was part of the motivation for offering the course at Blue Mountain, said assistant athletic director Rose Karper, who also teaches health and physical education and instructed Grace in her class. The course, which is certified by the American Heart Association, began in 2020 and is mainly for juniors and seniors.
School commendation
While other students have excitedly told Karper that they used lessons from the course to help family members with cuts or other basic first-aid needs, Grace is the first to save a life with what she learned, Karper said. In November, Grace received a commendation from the district during a school board meeting.
“I tell my classes that I hope they never have to use CPR, but if they need to, that I hope they have the confidence to do it. Grace did,” Karper said. “It’s incredible that a high school kid could remain calm and cool and collected enough to use it in a real-life situation.”
As Grace looks back on how apprehensive she was to take the class, she’s grateful she went through with it. Her certificate is now on the living room fireplace, just a few feet from where she rescued her mom.
“I guess it was for a reason,” she said of the class. “When it (her mom’s emergency) happened, I felt like I’d learned what to do, so I just did it. But it’s crazy that it’s because of me that she’s here.”
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