Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509080112
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN MCCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Tywanii Hairston was on the way to pay her water bill Tuesday when she pulled up behind a Roanoke city truck at a red light on Campbell Avenue.
The light turned green, but the truck didn't budge. After a moment the driver of another car honked the horn, and still the truck didn't move. Hairston thought it had stalled.
As she slowly drove around the truck, she saw a man slumped over the wheel. A former nursing assistant, Hairston parked her car and jumped out to see what was wrong.
Meanwhile, John McKee, a driver for Alert Towing on his way to a job, also had seen the man and stopped. He radioed his dispatcher to call 911, and with the help of another passer-by, pulled the man from the truck and laid him on the street.
Together, Hairston and McKee went into action. Neither had ever administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, before, although both knew the procedure. Hairston started giving mouth-to-mouth, and McKee pumped the man's chest until paramedics arrived.
Their swift action quite possibly saved Don Arthur's life. On Thursday, Arthur, 60, was in stable condition at Community Hospital, one of only a few who make it back after venturing so close to death.
"He was so cold when we first got him out of the truck," Hairston said. "After a few times he came around. I didn't even think about having anything over my mouth. I just started breathing into him. It was instinct. Thank God I remembered."
McKee had taken a CPR course 12 years ago and, somehow, he, too, remembered what to do.
"I waited 12 years, first time I ever had it tested," McKee said. "It is very tiring, very exerting. I was wringing wet after I got through."
He said he worked on Arthur for about five minutes, talking to him the whole time. "I was trying to get his attention, any reflex, get him back to reality.
"His eyes just had that glossy look. His eyes were wide open. There was nothing there," McKee said. "I don't know if he did go totally. All indications was he was gone."
David Hoback, Roanoke's emergency medical services coordinator, said that during those first minutes, Arthur was clinically dead, meaning he had lost all vital signs.
Hoback happened to be leaving his city office on Campbell Avenue for lunch when he heard the emergency call. He saw the crowd gathered around the man, with Hairston and McKee hunched over him.
Hoback took over for Hairston while McKee continued pumping Arthur's chest.
Two minutes later, the ambulance and emergency crews pulled up and set to work. The medics worked on Arthur for 26 minutes, average for a cardiac arrest, Hoback said. Twice they had to shock his heart back into a regular beat with electric paddles. They gave him a drug to keep the muscle from beating out of control again, and put a tube through his nose into his lungs for oxygen. At one point, Arthur raised his arm and a rescue worker held his hand. Finally stabilized, Arthur was loaded into the ambulance and taken to the hospital.
"You see all this on [the television program] `911.' You don't think about it until it hits home," said Georgie Arthur, his wife of 16 years. "He owes them his life."
She got a chance to thank Hoback on Thursday when he stopped by to see how the patient was doing. Hoback said the city emergency crews save 35 percent of the cardiac arrest patients, but only a few survive to walk out of the hospital.
They always try to visit patients when they're out of danger. But Arthur was special.
Hoback recognized him as a fellow city worker, although he didn't know his name. Arthur is the "barricade man," as Georgie described him. It's his job to set up barricades around accident scenes and construction sites. Arthur also works at The Roanoke Times, where he has delivered papers for 10 years.
Hairston said she thought about Arthur all Tuesday night at her job at Precision Fabrics and was happy to hear he was doing better the next day. She had never used her CPR skills before, even when she worked at a nursing home.
"I guess I was a little nervous," she said.
McKee would like to see mandatory CPR classes for all teen-agers as part of their driver's license requirements. The more people who know the procedure, he said, the more lives might be saved.
"If it ever happens again, I hope I'm there. If it ever happens to me, I hope someone else is there," he said.
And Georgie hopes that she and her family soon can meet the two strangers who, for a few minutes Tuesday, stepped out of their ordinary routines and helped save her husband's life.
by CNB