By Claire Osborn
Austin American-Statesman (Texas)
Copyright 2007 The Austin American-Statesman
All Rights Reserved
Paramedic Wendy Craig-Oldbury handed Minnie Norwood a bouquet of roses Wednesday at a reunion of cardiac arrest survivors and the people who saved them.
“You died several times in the ambulance,” Craig-Oldbury, who works for Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services, said.
“Yes,” said Norwood, a 66-year-old retired housekeeper for St. David’s Hospital who has a tracheotomy and breathes with help from an oxygen tank.
“I want to thank you for wasting your time and saving me,” she said with a grin.
Norwood was one of 61 people in Travis County who suffered cardiac arrests last year and were brought back to life by paramedics, said Ed Racht, the EMS’ medical director. During cardiac arrest, the heart stops beating, and a person is considered clinically dead.
The survivors and their rescuers were at the fifth annual reunion at City Hall sponsored by Austin-Travis County EMS, the Austin Fire Department and the American Heart Association.
“This is like a love party,” said Jacob Brochtrup, 19, who said he was in cardiac arrest for an hour after losing one of his legs in 2005 in a boat accident on Lake Austin.
“It’s a good tradition seeing people who could have been dead and they’re not,” said Brochtrup, who was wearing a T-shirt with the picture of an EMS helicopter on the back.
Other survivors at the reunion included Roy Kasse, an 80-year-old retired postal worker who said he had a heart attack in 2006 while buying two donuts at an H-E-B grocery in Pflugerville.
Larry Gilbert, a 64-year-old University of Texas biology professor, said his heart stopped after he took a break from playing basketball in August 2006 at Town Lake YMCA.
“The only thing I remember was reading the last two lines of a John Kelso column in the newspaper about Ohio State football fans,” Gilbert said.
Dottie Dearden, 82, held the 5-month-old baby of one of the Hudson Bend Fire Department paramedics who saved her.
“I think this is wonderful,” said Dearden, who was cuddling Kaley Zambrano, the daughter of Rachel Zambrano.
Rachel Zambrano and another Hudson Bend paramedic, Bryan Etheredge, saved Dearden’s life after she had a cardiac arrest in the parking lot of a Lakeway post office in February 2006.
Since the survivor celebrations began in 2002, 249 people have been saved from cardiac arrest in Travis County by emergency responders, said Racht. The survival rate of people who have had cardiac arrest in Travis County is 12 percent, he said, while nationally, the rate is 3 percent to 4 percent.
Craig-Oldbury said that Wednesday was the first time she had ever gotten to meet anyone she had saved from cardiac arrest in the seven years she had been a paramedic. “This is a dream come true” she said.