Restarting the heart

Today is another Restart a Heart day. It is a day to highlight the importance of learning CPR. I feel like I go on about it a bit but I do feel very passionate about it. But restarting a heart does not just involve doing CPR. The use of a defibrillator is just as important. Used together gives a person a greater chance of survival. A person’s heart stops when they go into cardiac arrest, your heart stops beating. A cardiac arrest is not a heart attack but it can be caused by one. It does annoy me sometimes as when a person has a cardiac arrest and CPR is used it is just called a heart attack. A cardiac arrest is very serious. Statistics show that 80% of people who have a heart attack survive whilst only 8% of people who have a cardiac arrest survive. That is why learning how to do CPR is so important. I was shocked when I was watching the Euros and a player dropped to the floor in a cardiac arrest. The most shocking part was seeing CPR being administered on the pitch. That immediate treatment saved his life. He had CPR and defibrillation and was conscious very quickly afterwards. As the footballer was, I was lucky as the paramedics were in the room when it happened to me. They performed immediate CPR and I have been told that they used a defibrillator eight times to get my heart starting again. I don’t think that I would be here not without this treatment. This immediate treatment is also key as after four minutes of the heart not beating irreplaceable damage is caused to the brain. My heart stopped beating for sixteen minutes and this caused my brain injury. But I am still here and I have had an urge to get people to learn CPR. I have had some success with this in the years before Covid hit the world but hopefully next year I will see people learning again. I also hope that there can be defibrillator training as well as they could look scary. It is important to know where your closest defibrillator is. We have three within five minutes to my house and when I talked to my sister about them she said that she wouldn’t bother going for one as it would be too late. This is really annoying as she should know the importance of them and how they save lives. For Restart a Heart the importance is to first call 999, to ask someone to find a defibrillator and start CPR. You never know, you could save a life.