| Chance Reunion Saves a Life
Mary May (at left), with Leslie
Meyers, who saved May’s life with an AED (automated external
defibrillator)
On
July 17, 2004, a coincidence at the Minneapolis St. Paul
International Airport turned into a dramatic, lifesaving event.
The twist of fate involved two women: Mary May, a San Francisco
Bay-area resident, and Leslie Meyers, a clinical specialist with
Medtronic, a medical technology company and the pioneer of
defibrillation, a technique that administers a shock to a
stopped heart to restore the heartbeat.
The encounter began when May was waiting for her flight home
to California. “I felt my face getting very cold,” she says.
“After that, I don’t remember anything until more than a day
later.” She had collapsed in sudden cardiac arrest, in which the
heart beats erratically and then stops. The condition is usually
fatal.
At the same time, Meyers was also headed home to the Bay area
on the same flight as May. As Meyers walked up to the gate, she
saw a crowd gathered around May’s slumped body, and people
asking, “Ma’am, ma’am, are you OK?”
Meyers instructed onlookers to get the woman on the floor,
check her pulse and breathing, and call 9-1-1. Then she ran to
look for an automated external defibrillator (AED), and found a
LIFEPAK® AED on a nearby wall. A small, portable electronic
device, an AED enables someone with minimal training to provide
a potentially lifesaving shock to a heart that has stopped
beating. |
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After three shocks from the AED,
May was unresponsive. Meyers remembers saying, “Don’t die on me.
I know you want to make it.” After a fourth shock, May’s heart
started beating and she began to breathe. Paramedics arrived and
asked about May’s medical history. Meyers blurted out that May
had a pacemaker. Then she reeled, suddenly realizing that she
knew the person whose life she had just saved—she had assisted
with implanting a pacemaker in May just a few months earlier.
Soon after May’s heart event, her pacemaker was replaced with an
implantable defibrillator that is designed to monitor the
heart’s rhythm and deliver a shock(s) if it detects a dangerous
rhythm. While May’s story has a happy ending, not everyone is so
fortunate. Every year, up to 450,000 Americans die of sudden
cardiac arrest because they don’t receive defibrillation in
time. This may change now that AEDs are available in many public
places, schools, places of worship, and even homes. AEDs are
easy to use with little training, and as May’s story
illustrates, they save lives.
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Note:
LIFEPAK AEDs are prescription devices. AED users should be
trained in CPR and use of the AED. Please consult your
physician. Although not everyone can be saved from sudden
cardiac arrest, studies show that survival rates can be
dramatically improved with early defibrillation. For more
information, please call 1.800.442.1142 or visit
www.medtronic-ers.com.
Medtronic Emergency Response Systems • 11811
Willows Road NE • Redmond, WA 98052 • 1.800.442.1142 •
www.medtronic-ers.com
LIFEPAK is a registered trademark of Medtronic
Emergency Response Systems Inc. Medtronic is a registered
trademark of Medtronic, Inc. ©2005 Medtronic Emergency Response
Systems, Inc. MIN 3205902-000 / CAT. 26500-001988 |
