Paul Beauregard – Plainstown, NH – 69 at the time of the event (May 2004)
The story of Paul Beauregard’s sudden cardiac arrest could almost qualify as a macabre Halloween tale.
Paul was working part time for a Plainstown, NH funeral director. He was out on a job and had just finished placing the body in a hearse when he walked back to the curb to talk to a police officer who was on the scene. It was then that everything went black and the 69-year-old retired section manager for Raytheon collapsed at the scene.
Fortunately, the officer had an AED in his cruiser and went to work getting Paul’s heart back into a steady rhythm before he was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
“That’s the only reason I was saved,” Paul said, “because (the police) were there and they had a defibrillator.”
Paul reports that when he regained consciousness in the hospital he, like most SCA survivors, remembered nothing about the incident. But, aside from a bit of disorientation, he seemed none the worse for the wear.
“They told me what happened and I understood it,” he said.
Still, after seven days of hospitalization, doctors were scratching their heads as to a possible cause for the arrest. There appeared to be no lasting damage to the heart and it was determined that he did not need an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) and was sent home to rest.
But the leisure time didn’t last long, as Paul was determined to help save other lives the way his had been saved.
“Since (the cardiac arrest) happened, I’ve been instrumental in getting four AEDs placed,” Paul reports, noting that his town’s American Legion post, senior citizens’ center, library and town hall all have defibrillators in place, ready to save a life when the need arises.
As for Paul’s current health status, he’s doing fine. Like many SCA victims, he has had no lingering effect from the arrest and, he says, it has had no great negative effect on his life.
“It was a freak thing,” he says of the incident, “that’s all it was.”