Does your school have a defibrillator?

[janette]

Saw this article in the paper today. How sad for this family that had already experienced so much heartache. I noticed my 14yo DD's middle school has one. The cost is really minimal compared to the advantages if it is only used once.

Tragedy proves defibrillators are vital
Family's latest tragedy may have been spared if school had defibrillator

01:09 PM CST on Monday, January 30, 2006
Our youngest son, Ford, blue eyes and a picket-fence smile under a mop of blond hair, interrupts some research for this column.

"How old will I be in 18 years?" he asks.

He wants a quick and easy answer for his math homework, and of course I don't give it to him.

But I do the math in my head anyway.

Twenty-six. He'll be 26.

Cardiologists diagnosed him a few years ago with something called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. What it means to Ford is that three or four times a year his heart races for no reason other than faulty wiring.

The symptoms vary in people. Some faint. Some get sick. In severe cases, only medical treatment restores normal heartbeats.

And sometimes, with a heart already under stress, as in athletics, it can lead to cardiac arrest.

Ford? He just smiles his picket-fence smile and says his heart's beating hard.

The latest pediatric cardiologist doesn't have to explain any of it.

He asks if I understand, and I tell him I do.

Better than I can say in front of Ford. Better than Kathleen Treanor understood about her own son.

Zachary Eckles, a campus hunk at 17, could bench press 310 pounds yet was fit enough to play on the soccer team.

He was running warm-up laps a couple of weeks ago at Edmond (Okla.) Santa Fe High School, getting ready for practice, when he collapsed.

Friends said he laughed and told his coaches he was OK. Then he stopped breathing. A coach administered CPR, but it didn't do any good. The school had no access to an automated external defibrillator, or AED, and Zachary died in front of his disbelieving classmates.

The medical examiner hasn't ruled yet. Could have been a virus that weakened his heart. Maybe a congenital defect, something he inherited.

Never did drugs, his mother said. Wanted to try steroids, and he and his mother checked out information before deciding against it.

Not that he needed any. He was a big, strong, handsome boy.

What in the world could have gone wrong?

"It never occurred to me my son could have had any problems," Treanor says by telephone.

Still, there were clues. A heart flutter showed up in a recent physical, though the doctor told her not to give it a thought.

She knows now she should have taken him for an EKG. But she just didn't think anything bad could happen.

Not that she's naive. Not a woman who's known more sorrow than most of us could comprehend.

Zachary's sudden, inexplicable death is not Kathleen Treanor's first tragedy. Her 4-year-old daughter, Ashley, died with her step grandparents in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

Maybe you know her story. Treanor testified at the subsequent trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

In testimony that might fit the sad, lilting lyrics of a Sarah McLachlan ballad, she breathes life into family members described as "collateral damage" by the man who took their lives.
Treanor was so close to her in-laws, Luther and LaRue Treanor, she called them "Dad" and "Mom."

Even told how LaRue filled a "hole" in her life after her own mother committed suicide only days before Zachary's birth.

Most days, LaRue looked after eight grandchildren.

But on that fateful spring morning, she had just Ashley. The three of them, Luther, LaRue and Ashley, drove into Oklahoma City from their farm in nearby Guthrie to take care of some Social Security matters.

"They were just going to be there for a short time, sign some papers," Treanor told the jury. "And then they were going to make a day of it. Maybe do some shopping and have lunch, that kind of thing."

Treanor held up well until near the end of her testimony. Mother and daughter had been counting the days until school would start – 137, it was – and when the number came up, Treanor went on alone.

"And I sit there in that parking lot for most of the day," she said, rage building, "and I cried because we weren't going to get that.

"It was gone. It was stolen from me."

Treanor's terrible grief and anger became a nation's. Her story ran in The New York Times. She lectured, counseled relatives of 9/11 victims, appeared on Oprah and Geraldo and The Today Show.

Even wrote a book: Ashley's Garden: One Family's Journey from Grief to Spiritual Restoration in the Aftermath of the Oklahoma Bombing.

And nothing – not the deaths of her mother and daughter and in-laws, not the trials or an execution, not the television appearances, not the catharsis of a book or the sympathies of her country – could prepare her for the death of a son, too.

"He was a big, healthy boy," she tells me, her voice tired and soft. "It doesn't make sense."

All she hopes now is that others learn from her latest tragedy. Tests may or may not have revealed Zachary's problem. Nothing's certain until the autopsy results are released.

But an AED might have saved her son. They're relatively cheap and easy to use, nearly foolproof, which is why the Texas Sports Medicine Foundation is raising funds to provide them for every high school in Texas.

Most schools still don't have them. Officials and parents simply don't understand the difference a few minutes makes.

Kathleen Treanor knows too late. She's not the first mother who had no idea, and she won't be the last.

And what are the rest of us to do with what we know? See that your school gets an AED.

As for Ford? He's scheduled in March for a procedure that will cure his tachycardia. Doctors call it an ablation. They say it has a 90 percent success rate.

For us, there was no equivocation. Ford's an active, athletic boy, just like his big brother. Getting better at math, too.

"In eighteen years," he says, smiling his picket-fence smile, "you'll be an old man."

An old man and a young one. This is my dream.

 

[Lil_Tink]

I don't think my school has one.

 

[xterratri]

I'm a 2nd med student on a campus that is mostly undergraduate. We have our academic building but share their other facilities including the campus center w/ the gym, track, fitness center, and pool. In early Dec, the school's men's baseball team coach dropped dead in the lobby of the campus center. I don't know if they had a defib then but I noticed when I started swimming again after the WDW marathon in Jan that there is a new looking AED hooked to the wall behind the check in desk. BTW, in addition to being the headquarters for the undergrad sports teams, these facilities are also used by a community fitness(read- elders) program.

 

[Daxx]

Our school has 4 -- one on each classroom level, one in the cafeteria (which is in the basement) and one in the gym. All staff (teachers, maintenence, etc.) are trained in using it.

 

[bobcat]

Both the school where I teach and the school my kids attend do. I believe my schools was a donation from Kiwanis. Not only should they be in the school but also at the athletic facilities, i.e. football field, baseball field, weightroom. By the time someone could run from the field into the school it could be too late. What a tragic story.

 

[TinkInPink]

My son's elementary and my daughter's middle school do and Our church has one .Oops posted this under my DD's name.

 

[Sparx]

I don't think my school has one.

 

[Caropooh]

I don't know if my DD6's school has one but my DD11 says that there is at least one at her school. She is quite proud of the fact that she knows how to do CPR on an infant, child and an adult. She also is trained to use an AED.

 

[KristaTX]

I substitute for the nurses in one of the nearby school districts, and each campus has an AED.

 

[Pixiedust34]

This is a timely post because we were just talking about this. Dh is a public school teacher and recently completed his CPR class. He learned that no school in our county is allowed to have one until they can *all* have one. Even if a parent (of a child with a heart condition) wants to buy one to donate for their child's school, dh was told that wouldn't be allowed. Is that CRAZY, or what?!
(We suspect that the school would be open to a lawsuit if a child died at a school w/o a defibrillator and the school down the street did have one. Maybe that's why they don't allow any anywhere until each school can have one? ).

I don't know how much defibrillators cost, but they certainly seem to be a worthwhile item to buy for each and every school--not only for the students but also for the teachers and the parent volunteers!

That said, there has to be at least 1 teacher (maybe more-I don't remember) in the building certified to give CPR. My dh is that teacher at his school.

 

[Mskanga]

All of our schools in the district have one and all have a school nurse too, the nurses are the ones certified to use them and some teachers volunteered for that too.

 

[polly p]

I think most schools have them in our area. They have them at all the kids sporting events with the trainer. I think our church now has one also.

 

[kaylajr]

I didn't know my kids school had one until Nov 6 2003

That is the day My FIL died in the school Cafeteria
He was the first person they tried using it on
and there were 2 Nurses in the room at the time

Didn't help FIL but I was glad to learn the school not only has one but that they know how to use it