Survivor Day highlights heroic efforts that saved lives
A packed house of emergency responders and 13 cardiac arrest survivors were honoured Friday afternoon at Fanshawe College.
Among them was Jim Kinsmen. Kinsmen was golfing last summer, had no symptoms or signs, but as he putted out on the 18th hole, he fell to the ground.
“I don't remember anything. Hardly till the next morning. I remember hearing a siren once, and I did remember somebody asked me at the hospital if I knew I was at the hospital, and I kind of took for granted that,” Kinsmen said.
Peter Desjardine was one of the attending paramedics and remembers that day clearly.
“We just rolled up onto the scene at the last hole of the course there for [Jim] and the bystanders doing CPR for him, doing an excellent job doing what they could to help him before we got there,” said Desjardine.
Friday was the first time Kinsmen was able to meet Desjardines.
“I'm really looking forward to meeting people that helped me out or I wouldn't be here,” Kinsmen said before the event.
For Desjardines, who greeted his former patient with a smile and shared a few laughs in a touching moment, wished this was the outcome for every call he attends.
“It's probably one of the best feelings you ever get. It's not very often when you're on a cardiac arrest that you have a survivor and having the opportunity to give them closure and have closure for yourself to see how things have come out since that eventful day, it's just amazing.,” said Desjardine. “It gives you that sense of well-being and that you did a great job.”
This is one of many stories, but according to Middlesex London Paramedic Service, it is in the vast minority. Only 5 per cent of people who suffer a sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital will survive.
"We have to remember, in some cases, they don't often know what has happened to that patient. So to be able to celebrate and have this reunion in some ways brings closure for them," Middlesex County Warden Cathy Burghardt-Jesson said.
There are up to 40,000 cardiac arrests each year in Canada, one every 13 minutes.
Of those cardiac arrests, 85 per cent happen outside of a hospital.
Kinsmen knows he's fortunate
“Yeah, it's a little bit slower. I'm still getting out, doing a few holes of golf. I'm trying to enjoy life as much as possible,” he said.
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