Just me and the Neilson boys: A little miracle…

A week and a half ago I had an interesting experience. I had worked Thursday night and not gotten to sleep on Friday until pretty late in the day. I didn’t get out of bed until almost 6 pm. I texted my friend Heidi to make sure she was still working my shift for me that night and she said she was. She also informed me (in a joking way) that she was mad at me because there was a good band playing at SUU that night and she was going to miss it while working my shift. I offered to take it back, but when she declined I remembered that last year Josh said that it was a really fun party and that I should have brought the boys. So I decided to roll my lazy self out of bed and take the boys to the homecoming party.

I got to the party about 8:15. There was a ton of people there and fun music, free glow sticks for the boys and a lot going on. Josh directed us down to the free food and ice cream (that’s the important part right?) and down we went. After we got through the food line we found a spot on the grass and I sat the boys down to eat. A few minutes later Jesse started telling me that Aaron (one of the SUU officers) was "trying to talk to a guy laying on the ground” Although I thought it was probably nothing I told the boys to stay there with the little boys and I’d be back. I walked up behind them and stayed back because who wants to interfere with the police arresting someone or something like that right? But Aaron and another officer were kind of shaking the guy and asking him if he was alright. So I asked Aaron if he wanted help and he said yes. There was another guy standing right there who I thought maybe knew him, but he just happened to be there when he slumped over. After making sure the man hadn’t fallen and injured his head or neck, we laid him out on the grass so we could see what was going on. The guy was still breathing, but other than that I couldn’t get any response out of him, even to pain, and I was having a hard time finding a pulse….then he quit breathing. I said something intelligent like “Uh, he just quit breathing and I can’t find a pulse” and one of the officers asked if we should start cpr and I said yes. The next 10-15 minutes were a blur. The officers did chest compressions and I held the man’s airway open and tried to assess what the heck was going on….he was way too young for this! I never realized before this moment how hard decisions are to make when you have nothing but your eyes, ears and hands to tell you what is going on. I kept just thinking…and probably saying…I just wish I had a monitor to help tell me what is going on! One of the city police officers brought me a bag so that we could breathe for him and Josh was running around trying to find a AED. Before Josh realized I was already there helping he was trying to get me on the phone to tell me to go help because they’d started cpr. I have never been so happy to see EMT’s before. They came and hooked him up to the AED, we continued to breathe for him and the officers did cpr between two shocks while they started IV’s and tried to intubate and suction and all sorts of other good stuff. It was nice knowing the people who showed up too, that made it a little easier. Before they loaded him into the ambulance he had a pulse and was trying to breathe on his own. I heard from the school somewhere that he made it and should have gone home from the hospital this weekend.

There are so many things that went right it’s awesome. There are also lots of things that happened that were good learning experiences for the school employees I think. The police officers had just taken CPR the week before and they did freaking awesome. Josh says he thought that it was easier for them to make the decision to start CPR because I was there helping them too. I don’t think that I did anything super amazing that someone else couldn’t have done, but I happened to be there and was able to help and I’m grateful for the experience. I should have been at work, I should have been home watching a movie with my kids, I just happened to walk down to get food right then. I’m sure Heavenly Father had something to do with all of those “should have’s” and “just happened to be’s” It made me even more grateful for our police officers who are first on scene all the time and have to make these kinds of decisions with less medical knowledge than what I have, and then who rarely hear the outcome and are left wondering if anything they did helped or made a difference….well in this case it definitely did. I’m also more grateful for our EMT’s and Medics. They definitely came to my rescue that night! I was glad to have someone there who had a monitor, and a way to transport this person and to take over for me.

I definitely didn’t feel like I wanted or needed any recognition for any of this, but when the SUU newspaper didn’t even mention that the officers helped save this person I was pretty mad! They deserve some recognition for their efforts even if they don’t really want it :) (I know I’m a hypocrite…it’s ok) So I was pretty glad when Josh told me that they were going to recognize the officers at the football game on Saturday and that they were giving the family members of the officers free tickets to the game so we could be there. So the boys and I garbed up in our SUU attire and brought along our camera and went to the game. Shortly after getting there Josh came and informed me that I would be going out on the football field with them at half time to be recognized as well. I freaked out a little and told him no way! Guess what I lost. As much as I didn’t want any recognition it was very nice of them to want to recognize those who helped out. There was also the guy who saw him collapse and ran for help out there. They gave a run down of what happened that night and mentioned all of our names (I was hoping they’d forget me!) and then the President of SUU shook all our hands and gave us a little thank you gift that's a nice little statue of a Thunderbird with our names on it and it says “In recognition of the actions that you took and the life that you saved. From caring comes courage” It was very nice of them to do that.

Tyler ended up taking the pictures for me, since I was out there with them. They put me next to the president…I think it’s a conspiracy :) I also told Rick (Josh’s chief) that he was in big trouble for including me lol. So left to right is the guy who called for help (I don’t remember his name!) Aaron, Jed, Zack, Carlos, Josh, Me, President Benson and his son, and Rick.