TONTITOWN — Parishioners at St. Joseph Church in Tontitown witnessed a medical miracle when a woman was revived after collapsing in the pews — and then they raised money to purchase defibrillators for the parish in case it ever happens again.
The occasion was Easter Sunday 2009. As parish administrator Shannon Stowe recalled, “The church was absolutely packed full (with) every bit of seating, including the cry room,” taken.
Midway through Mass, a woman in the back row collapsed.
Luckily for the victim, there were at least two doctors and a nurse practitioner in the house. Dr. Richard Placek, an anesthesiologist, was seated with the choir when someone motioned to him that a doctor was needed. He dashed out and found the nurse practitioner was already taking the woman’s pulse — she had none. At Placek’s heels was another doctor, Dr. William Beck, also an anesthesiologist.
They scooped up the tiny woman — “She probably weighed 90 pounds soaking wet,” Placek said — laid her flat on her back in the vestibule and the two physicans began administering CPR. Nine minutes later, the ambulance crew arrived.
That’s an eternity for someone in ventricular fibrillation as this woman was. “The current statistics show that for every minute that you wait for emergency services, you lose 10 percent of your people,” Placek explained.
Once the ambulance arrived, the doctors hooked up the electrocardiogram monitor and then administered an electric shock. Her heart, which had been twitching instead of beating normally, restarted. She was taken to the hospital where, by all accounts, she made a full recovery and moved out of state with her husband to be closer to their children.
“We say it’s just a miracle,” Placek added. “By current standards, when nine minutes (pass), 90 percent of the people are not savable. It only takes a few minutes for brain death to begin.”
Fortunately, it doesn’t take a medical professional to restart a heart. Automated external defibrillators can be used effectively by lay people with little or no training. Equipped with computers that determine whether to administer electric shock to the patient, defibrillators can quickly shock a heart into returning to normal rhythm before the ambulance arrives, dramatically increasing survival rates.
“You don’t have to wait for the EMTs to get there,” Placek said. “If you can get this on within the first minute or two, you can save so many more people.”
He talked to Stowe about the possibility of getting a defibrillator for the parish. His wife, Deborah, a registered nurse, was helping her employer, the Springdale public schools, get the devices for each of the schools. The idea went to the next parish council meeting.
“Within a month, we had the first announcement in the bulletin and within a month of that, we had the money (about $1,800) raised for the first (defibrillator),” Stowe said.
“We have two now,” she added. “It turned out we had more than enough donations for the first one (although) it took us a little bit longer to get the second one.”
The church hopes to have a third one soon (to allow for one in each building: church sanctuary, parish hall and the education center), helped by memorial contributions made to honor the deceased daughter of a parishioner.
Stowe and Placek both say the devices are easy to use.
“All you have to do is lay the person down, expose their chest and (the defibrillator) pads have a picture of where that pad is supposed to be on the chest,” Placek explained.
The user removes a plastic coating from the pads to expose an adhesive and sticks it on the victim’s chest. A computer immediately starts reading vital signs and determines whether to administer an electric shock.
Another parishioner offered to do CPR training (including defibrillator usage in the course) and about 20 parishioners took advantage of the opportunity, Stowe said.
It’s easier and may be more effective than CPR, which lay people sometimes find difficult to administer.
“CPR is scary and, if you don’t know the person, people are afraid of diseases,” Placek said.
In the case of the stricken woman at St. Joseph, “It was kind of funny because Dr. Beck and I had worked together for a number of years. He was doing compressions and I was doing mouth-to-mouth.”
Even for the doctor, it was the first time he’d administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation without benefit of masks and other medical equipment.
“It turned out really good (and was) an eye opener for everybody,” Placek concluded.
