There are so many perspectives from which to tell this story, I'm not sure whose to use first.
Jim Dirkson's perhaps. He's the 56-year-old Oswego scientist and assistant coach of a traveling baseball team who happened to be pitching to his son the evening of Jan. 11 when he suddenly collapsed.
Or I could start with 16-year-old Oswego High School junior Ariana Castillo, who was working out with her traveling softball team the same time Dirkson went into cardiac arrest at the Oswego sports complex.
Then again, I could take the story back to Edward Hospital nurse Amanda Hunt, who is passionate about CPR training for high school students – indeed, the public in general .
By the time other coaches got to Dirkson – with paramedics three or four minutes away – he had no pulse. Precious seconds were ticking away when Ariana calmly approached the chaos happening all around her and said, "I can do CPR."
Ariana admits she was nervous when she stepped forward to offer her services. But as she began performing CPR, "I was completely calm," she recalled.
Dirkson is a big guy: 6 feet 2 inches tall and 205 pounds. Ariana weighs 115. Yet she still managed to break four ribs of his ribs as she worked to get that faint heartbeat. It was no easy feat. At one point, Ariana said, Dirkson had fluid in his mouth and she needed help turning him to clear air passages. By the time paramedics got Dirkson to Rush Copley Medical Center, he had to be shocked three times to get his heart stable, and was put into a four-day coma that eventually led to a couple of stents.
That Dirkson, a scientist at Cabot Microelectronics in Aurora, is around to talk about this happy outcome is nothing short of amazing, he insists. But there's certainly more to this story, including the fact that he only beat the five percent survival odds his doctor had given him for this sort of "widow maker," and there's no heart or brain damage.
And that, he says, "is a testament to Ariana's very quick response."
Laura Nussle, Oswego East's varsity softball coach and Kinetic Wellness Department head, started the classes seven years ago in the Oswego schools after teaching in Naperville, which has had an aggressive CPR/AED training program throughout the community since 2001, said Hunt.
The facts speak for themselves: For every minute a person is down from cardiac arrest, the survival rate drops 10 percent, said Hunt. And it's been shown that communities which actively promote AEDs have raised survival rates from the normal 7 to 10 percent to 50 to 70 percent.
Here's another notable fact she points out: While Illinois law now mandates AEDs in schools and athletic complexes, 80 percent of cardiac arrests occur at home. Which means, chances are high the person you could save is someone you love very much.
Ariana and Dirkson were strangers on that fateful Sunday when their lives intersected. But two weeks after he was released from the hospital, Dirkson met the teen at the training facility where she saved his life. There, he presented her with a necklace bearing angel wings.
"God put Ariana there that night," he said. "And it began with her training."
Which brings us to yet one more perspective on this story, one that began 16 years ago with Ariana's parents.
Their daughter, it turns out, was born with a double heart murmur that has been closely monitored over the years. It's the reason Wendy and Ramon Castillo learned CPR before they could take her home from the hospital. It's why Ariana, who wants to become a cardiologist, not only took the school's CPR class, she became certified in it.
And it's why she did not hesitate to step forward and use that training when a man she did not know suddenly crumpled to the floor.
As a result of all that, the Oswego Outlaws, Ariana's traveling team, is implementing CPR training for all coaches. And speaking of coaches, Dirksen finished his last rehab session on Friday and plans to start back to work Monday and resume coaching with a clean bill of health.
All because of a young girl "with the heart and confidence of a lion," said Dirkson. "She saved my life and she changed my life. There's no other word for it but a miracle."
Ariana, who admitted she thought about skipping practice that night, agrees.
"God," she said, "put me there for a reason."
SOURCE: The Chicago Tribune