(VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)
A Beit Shemesh teacher in her fifth month of pregnancy suffered a heart attack outside her school on Tuesday morning and her life was saved by two high school students.
Chen Danziger, 29, a mother of two and resident of Efrat, collapsed outside the Branco Weiss high school where she teaches. Two 17-year-old students, one of whom is an MDA volunteer, noticed her lying there and immediately began performing CPR in an act that saved her life.
The students also cried out for help and the school’s gym teacher, Sharon Chaim, arrived with a group of teachers at the same time as an MDA paramedic.
“I asked him if she has a pulse and he said that she didn’t,” Chaim told Yisrael Hayom. “We started CPR. Meanwhile, he attached a defibrillator and gave her electric shocks as she was lying there unconscious and completely blue.”
United Hatzalah volunteers also arrived as well as additional MDA paramedics and they continued performing CPR as a team. Danziger “died” four times with the team shocking her back to life each time and she eventually regained a steady pulse.
She was evacuated to Hadassah Ein Kerem in serious condition and is now in stable condition in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.
“If it wasn’t for the life-saving treatment by the two students and MDA, she wouldn’t be with us,” Dr. Gabby Elbaz Greener said. “She sort of died and came back four times.”
The hospital released a video in which Danziger spoke about her experience, although she has no memory of the actual incident. “I went up to the school from the parking lot,” Danziger said. “I sat on a rock and from that moment I don’t remember a thing. I was told that two students saved my life. They’re not my students but I know them. It’s very moving to know that I’m in a safe place – specifically due to the students – that they know how to do this which saved my life.”
Danziger told the doctors that her brother had experienced a similar heart attack four years and also clinically died and was brought back to life with electrical shocks. Dr. Elbaz Green said that Danziger will be fitted with a pacemaker before she leaves the hospital.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
Kol Hakavod to the students and staff as well as the EMS services for their hard work. Just a point to the article: if they were able to shock her with the AED it means that she wasn’t clinically dead rather she was either in V-fib or V-tach which are types of arrhythmia that a shock is used to stabilize. V-fib and V-tach lead to heart failure, which then is technically clinical death. If the AED is advising shock it means that it senses that there is still some form of rhythm, just not a useful one. A-sys (Asystole), which is technically clinical death, is not a shockable rhythm. A-sys is what a V-fib or V-tach rhythm will lead to if not treated with CPR/AED immediately.
It is so important for every person to get even the basic training in CPR.
שמרתם מאוד לנפשותיכם!!
כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה!!
Best health and wishes to everyone