Charity volunteers save man who collapsed during 10k run
Volunteers from Sunderland heart health charity Red
Sky Foundation put their training to good use when a man collapsed during a sponsored run.
Trainee nurse Lisa Loftus and gym owner Mickey Donkin performed CPR on the man after he collapsed during the Great North 10K in Newcastle on Sunday.
Lisa and Mickey were able to keep the man alive long enough for Red Sky Foundation founder Sergio Petrucci to fetch a defibrillator from the charity’s nearby van.
Mickey was a literal knight in shining armour: “I have never, ever dressed up but my number was 1066, so I had a knight’s costume on,” he said.
The patient was on the ground and surrounded by onlookers when Lisa and Mickey spotted him and Mickey immediately realised serious intervention was needed.
“There were a lot of people around and they were trying to put him into the recovery position but I could see he was not breathing,” he said.
Mickey, who runs Evolution Fitness in Houghton, also works in events and has a medical qualification through work. He is a former first aid instructor himself.
He and Lisa took turns
working on the man until Sergio arrived with the defibrillator: “This is the thing people don’t realise,” said Sergio. “You have to keep working on CPR - it must have been 15 or 20 minutes. It was the luckiest day of his life.”
Lisa is in her third year of training as a nurse and admitted she had not expected to be putting her training to such good use, though it had been touch and go: “He went three times and we managed to get him back,” she said.
It was only at the end of the run that confirmation came that the man was alive.
“We knew he was okay when he went into the ambulance but all way round I was worrying,” said Lisa.
People who suffer a cardiac arrest outside hospital have a survival rate of less than 10%, but Mickey said the man had been lucky: “Everything fell into place for him,” he said.
“Early recognition of what was happening, early CPR and early defibrillation – not to mention that he was only about half a mile from the RVI and all the roads were closed.”
To donate to the Red Sky Foundation, visit https:// redskyfoundation.com/
We knew he was okay when he went into the ambulance but all the way round I was worrying