Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
NORTH WEBSTER - Robert Snyder beat the odds last winter when his heart stopped beating and his wife began administrating cardio pulmonary resuscitation.
Most "CPR-in-progress" calls do not end happily, according to Scott Melling, director of the North Webster-Tippecanoe Township EMS.
"The percentage of people who walk out of the hospital after a 'CPR save' is only three percent nationwide," Melling said Friday.
Snyder, 78, also survived a quintuple bypass heart surgery after his heart stopped beating Dec. 7, 2001.
"My heart was all blocked up," the WWII veteran said. "I hadn't had any problems before."
His wife of 18 years, Connie, heard her husband fall in their Epworth Forest dining room and began CPR immediately, remembering training she took in the 1970s.
"It was like riding a bicycle," she said. "You just do it."
In between breaths and compressions Connie dialed 911 and paramedic Chris Buckner and advanced EMT Trent Nabinger arrived a couple of minutes after they received the call from Kosciusko Central Dispatch.
"Connie kept his heart in prime condition," Buckner said, meaning it still had electrical activity.
Buckner, an EMS paramedic with 12 years of experience, explained during a heart "attack" it is as if the heart is having its own seizure with erratic electrical activity.
Defibrulation - electrical shocks - is administered to set the heart's electrical pattern back on track.
By the time Robert was loaded in the ambulance, Buckner was getting a heart beat and blood pressure reading.
"I don't remember a thing, naturally, I was dead," Robert said.
Now occupied with regular exercise and taking two mile walks, the former Blue Flame LP Gas manager was in Parkview Hospital for five weeks.
"It seemed like an eternity before they got there," Connie said before she saw the red lights of the ambulance.
Paramedic Mike Oberg also arrived on the scene and assisted Buckner while Nabinger drove to Fort Wayne.
"Robert is the first person I've ever talked to after a CPR save," Buckner said, illustrating the rarity of survival. "A lot of people arrive at the hospital but don't walk out."
The American Heart Association recommends people recertify themselves in CPR every two years.
The North Webster-Tippecanoe Township EMS instructors offer CPR and first aid classes in the township building. Melling plans to make the service a regular occurrence by the end of the year.
"Bystander CPR is critical in the first four to six minutes to prevent brain damage," he said.
Connie did everything right, also going against the national average which indicates people forget 40 percent of what they learned in a month.
She waved that statistic away though.
"You're always reminded," she said "by television shows and in magazines."
She has wondered about a couple of things since Robert's troubles, though.
"People come up to me and say they could never give CPR to a loved one. How can you not do it?" she asked.
She also wanted to know how the dispatcher she called knew where she lived. Buckner explained that her address came up on a computer screen the second she called in.
"So that's how they knew where to come when I hadn't given my address," she said.
The Enhanced 911 system used by Central Dispatch also tracks whether or not an ambulance had been there before and the kind of medications a person may be taking.
"People don't say enough about our EMS until it's their turn," Connie said. "I don't know what we'd do without them."
The North Webster- Tippecanoe Township EMS has four full-time paramedics and three full-time EMTs; 10 part-time paramedics and 12 part-time EMTs and "a lot of volunteers," Melling said. "We can always use more personnel."
