A Cork paramedic who resuscitated her partner after he suffered a cardiac arrest is launching a new training service to help others.
A year ago, Mark O’Keeffe, then aged 48, was at home with his paramedic partner, Helena Kiely. They watched TV and went to bed as normal, but at 4.44am, Helena woke up to find Mark sitting at the edge of the bed, gasping for breath.
Helena urged Mark to relax his breathing, thinking initially that he might be having a panic attack, but was also aware, through her training, that the episode might be more serious.
“He never spoke, and he walked to the ensuite, put his hand on the door handle and had a really slow motion collapse onto the ground,” she recalls. “He was initially lying on his back, so I turned him on to his right hand side, and squeezed a muscle in the shoulder called the trapezius muscle, which we do to try and get a level of response from people. I was calling his name, but there was no response.”
Mark then started snoring, which Helena recognised as a sign that he was in difficulty, and when she checked for a pulse, she didn’t find one. “It was at that stage that I knew he was in cardiac arrest, so I got my phone and rang 999,” she says.
“I’m an off-duty responder with the National Ambulance Service as well, and we have our own kit bag and AED (Automated External Defibrillator) for when we respond to calls to administer basic life support. I got the defib out of the car and went back upstairs and started working on Mark.”
The AED is a portable device used to treat sudden cardiac arrest by analysing the heart’s rhythm and delivering an electric shock to restore a normal beat. Helena went into work mode and popped the AED’s pads onto Mark’s chest, and it advised her to shock him.
“I began CPR and Mark had two shocks altogether, and then the third one was ‘no shock advised’,” she recalls. “It was at that stage that the first responders arrived and assisted me with CPR, and I began to put an airway into Mark’s mouth and gave him rescue breaths.”
Helena used the BVM (Bag-Valve Mask), which is used in emergencies to provide oxygen and breaths to patients who can’t breathe adequately for temporary airway support. While she is used to doing this in a work scenario, doing it on the man she loves added a whole new layer of stress. She is grateful that her extensive training allowed her to stay calm and go into work mode.
“Mark was clinically dead at that stage,” she told Paul Byrne, on The Opinion Line on 96FM.
The fourth analysing rhythm was “shock advised” again, so we shocked him again.”
The crews arrived from the National Ambulance Service with advanced paramedics on board, and at that point, Mark “came back”, much to Helena’s relief.
“He had a nice, strong pulse, but he was still quite critical at that stage, where he was presenting as if he was either having a seizure or a major bleed,” she says. “So we were thinking it was either cardiac or neurological, but we weren’t sure, so we were basically in post-resuscitation care at that stage. The crews were absolutely amazing, and it was just like being at work.”
Mark was rushed to hospital and has thankfully made a full recovery, and he is very grateful for the life-saving interventions that have allowed him to be walking around today and feeling as well as he does. He recalls very little about the cardiac arrest, but didn’t experience any of the telltale signs of an impending heart attack prior to going to bed that night.
“I woke up about three o’clock the following day in the CUH, with absolutely no recollection of anything,” he recalls. “I hadn’t a clue what was after happening, but I was very sore with a lot of physical issues at this point, because there was a bit of damage done.”
Prior to the cardiac event, Mark was active and a regular gym-goer, but in the aftermath of the event, he had to take things gently and carefully. He admits to feeling very vulnerable initially and says that he doesn’t take anything for granted now.
“At one point, I couldn’t walk to the front door and back again,” he says. “I like to be active, and all the things that I took for granted weren’t a possibility for a period of time. That’s after all coming back, thanks be to God, and I’m after making a 100 per cent recovery and life is just back to normal. I’m grateful for all the simple things, like my family and being able to get up on a boat and just go about my daily routines.”
Mark is very grateful to Helena and to all the first responders, paramedics and CUH staff involved in saving his life and his subsequent recovery. The Carrigaline First Responders were there within eight minutes, and the ambulance service arrived within 15 minutes.
Helena has since left the ambulance service, and, wanting to give something back, she and Mark have just launched their own business called Echo Training Solutions to educate people in life-saving techniques. Through it, Helena conducts training sessions on CPR and how to use a defibrillator to groups or individuals and teaches first response and first aid. The countrywide training service will also focus on mindfulness and PTSD, to support the mental health of those who administer CPR to family members.
Helena thinks that everyone should be educated in life-saving procedures and points out that in 2023, 68 per cent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests actually occurred in the home. Sadly, the survival rate was less than 8 per cent.
Mark was delighted to meet some of the people involved in saving his life earlier this week, including Lorna Hughes and Paula Sullivan from Carrigaline Community First Responders, Dr Owen Fogarty from CUH, Amy Curtis who was working in the control centre in Dublin and took the 999 call made by Helena, and paramedics Imelda O’Shea and Liam O’Reilly. He feels extremely grateful to everybody involved in saving his life and the remarkable support they gave Helena.
“It’s a really humbling experience for me to meet all the different people who would have seen me in a completely different state 12 months ago,” he says.
For information on Echo Training Solutions, contact Helena and Mark on echotrainingsolutions@outlook.com or 087 005 4073.
