With
a child's life in the balance, doctors say Ted Straub, a teacher and soccer
coach in Syracuse, did everything exactly right: He responded with emergency
CPR that's credited with saving 12-year-old Jade McKenney. (Gary Walts |
gwalts@syracuse.com)
In his mind, Ted Straub heard
the distinct command.
He couldn't tell you which
instructor said it, or what session it came from. It was simply the imperative
driven home each time -- the one from all those cardiopulmonary resuscitation
trainings he'd gone to as a teacher, the CPR sessions in a classroom or a gym
or at the side of a pool.
It was training he hoped to
never use:
Lean down, get on your knees,
line up your shoulders above your hands. Put one hand above the other. Press
down on the chest.
All that came back to him on
a beautiful September day at Barry Park, where a girl without a pulse or
heartbeat was quiet on the ground, where there was no time for any fear about
what might happen next.
The command he remembered:
Two breaths, then 30 compressions.
Straub, 35, is a physical
education teacher at McKinley-Brighton Elementary School in Syracuse. He began
work this month at that full-time position. A few years ago, he left a career
in advertising to become a teacher. His old job involved promoting fast food.
He grew tired of it.
"I wanted to do
something that helped kids to be healthy," he said.
Along with teaching, he
coaches the girls modified soccer team from Nottingham High School, a team
consisting of more than 30 girls from city middle schools.
The children practice at the
park, where Straub arrived -- as he does each day -- on the afternoon of Sept.
10. Driving there, he planned on going through some basic drills, some
fundamentals. The girls, before they started, ran a few laps to get loose.
Jade McKenney, 12, went to
the coach with a request. Jade was born with a heart murmur. Her parents and
doctors provided forms giving her the OK to play soccer, but they also asked if
the child -- when needed -- could go at her own pace. As practice got started,
Jade asked to run a second lap, by herself, to thoroughly warm up.
Straub said that was fine. He
assembled the rest of his team in two lines, near the net.
As he started a drill, he
heard players screaming.
Jade, on the other side of
the field, had collapsed.
Priscilla Fudesco, 13, a team
captain, noticed when Jade asked to run a lap alone, a choice Fudesco described
as unusual for girls in middle school: Typically, they like company. For a
reason Fudesco can't quite explain, she was uneasy about Jade.
When her friend didn't return
to the drill, Fudesco looked around the park.
She saw Jade, motionless, on
the ground. Fudesco and a teammate, Cammie Nash, ran to her. Straub heard them
screaming:
"Jade! Jade! Jade!"
The child was more than 100
yards from the practice. "I sprinted over ... I don't think I've ever run
so fast in my life ... and she was lying face down in the grass," Straub
said.
"I tapped her on the
shoulder and shook her and knew right away something was seriously wrong. I
could tell by looking at her there was nothing there. I had to act fast. People
say to me: 'You must have been freaked out,' and they say they couldn't have
done the same thing.
"But I tell you: You sit
through all these trainings, and when it happens, it clicks in."
Dr. Craig Byrum, a pediatric
cardiologist who treats Jade in Syracuse, describes the rescue as "a
miracle." Jade was in full cardiac arrest, he said. Coming back from that
condition demands, as he puts it, having "four or five stars in
place."
The first is the presence of
someone with CPR training, like Straub, "who did the thing that all of us
are supposed to know how to do."
The second and third stars
are simple -- but don't always line up:
You need a mobile phone, and
someone to make a perfect call.
Straub had a phone. He rolled
Jade over, then handed it to Fudesco, his young captain. He told her to call
911.
"I was afraid,"
Fudesco said, "but I knew I had to stay calm to make sure Jade was
OK."
She made the call and
answered the dispatcher's questions, while Straub followed the command locked
into his memory:
Two breaths, 30 compressions.
Straub's challenge, Byrum
later explained, didn't involve trying to get Jade's heart beating again. His
job was to serve as what Byrum calls a bridge, to provide enough exterior force
to send blood coursing through her body -- especially to her brain -- until
emergency help arrived.
Through his hands, for those
few minutes, Straub kept the girl alive.
The brief space of time,
Straub said, seemed extended, never-ending. He continued to perform CPR as Joe Horan, coach of the modified boys team, came
to his side. Don Paradise and Michele Gulla -- nurses who happened to be driving
past -- saw him with Jade, stopped their car and did all they could to help.
Straub kept going as he heard
the sound of approaching sirens, as a 'mini' truck from nearby fire Engine Co.
10 pulled up, as firefighter Steve Segur and Lt. Paul Schaap hurried toward the
girl.
Paradise, a nurse, moved in
and took over CPR as Straub stepped back to give the firefighters room. Segur
made sure Jade had a clear airway, while Schaap applied stickers to her chest
that can carry a charge from a defibrillator.
Again, Byrum said, the stars
had to line up perfectly: All those people -- each one -- played critical
roles. By good luck, Schaap and Segur were stationed on East Genesee Street, a
short drive away. According to their records, the alarm went off at 3:45 p.m.
and they were at the park in three minutes.
As for the defibrillator,
Byrum explained that a heart stops beating and often quivers during cardiac
arrest -- a condition known as ventricular fibrillation. The machine does a
reading and then answers this question:
Does the wounded heart have
an electrical rhythm that can be restarted by a jolt?
The answer isn't always yes.
In Jade's case, it was.
Schaap administered a shock.
When it was finished, he
said, "she gave a little groan." Segur saw Jade try to take a breath.
He used a bag valve mask to help the girl inhale.
A Rural/Metro ambulance took
Jade to the hospital, where she was soon in the company of her parents, David
and Diane Wright McKenney, and her sister Jett -- all of whom shifted from fear
into almost bottomless gratitude. Jade would awaken and start to regain her
strength. The next day, she sent her coach a message for the girls:
"Tell the team I'm sorry
I wasn't feeling well yesterday at practice."
The doctors told Jade's
family a valve had failed her heart, and they expect to replace it -- sometime
this fall -- at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester. Jade's mother said the
girl, understandably, isn't thrilled about the surgery.
Yet in the definition of
highest meaning, she is fine. Those who love her can't stop thinking, as Byrum
said, of how the stars aligned.
Straub had scant time, after
the ambulance left, to collect himself. Horan helped him to get his bearings,
reassure his team and calmly finish practice. Everyone -- the doctors and
firefighters and staff at the hospital -- say that when it mattered, Straub did
things exactly right.
Many people have stopped by
McKinley-Brighton to thank him, including Superintendent Sharon Contreras, who
described Straub and his fellow teachers as "unsung heroes."
Straub insists he's not.
He's a coach, he said, and a
child was in trouble, and it came down to all that training, drilled into his
head.
Still, no training could
prepare him for how it felt when he stopped at the hospital, and Jade greeted
him while she was resting in a chair.
This time, when he reached
toward her, she reached out and hugged him back.
