School Team’s Training Saves A Teen’s Life
Telita Calley and the students and staff who helped save her, Jennifer Herbst, Jordan Oxley, Marelize Kriel, Marty Calley, Bianca Rothman, Joel Calley and Tain Botha.Picture: Mogens Johansen/The West Australian
According to the proverb, it takes a village to raise a child — but a Perth family have discovered it also takes a village to save a child.
When 16-year-old Telita Calley went into sudden cardiac arrest at Kingsway Christian College last month, an army of students and teachers came to her aid, including her father Marty, who teaches at the school.
Mr Calley said his daughter’s heart went into ventricular fibrillation, where the heart cannot pump blood, causing cardiac arrest.
“She collapsed and some students put her in the recovery position and phoned triple-0, and some other students came and got me,” he said. “By the time I got there, another teacher had started CPR and we put some oxygen on Telita and continued with the CPR for 20 minutes until the ambulance arrived.
“When they got there, they took over and basically brought her back, and we went to hospital where she spent eight days.”
Mr Calley said tests revealed nothing wrong with Telita’s heart, and doctors at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital had put it down to a freak cardiac event, caused by an “electrical storm” in her heart that made it stop.
Mr Calley said he and the other teacher who gave CPR had received first aid training by St John Ambulance.
“But the students trained in senior first aid really started the process by putting her in the recovery position, so it was absolutely a team effort,” he said.
Story Credit: https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/school-teams-training-saves-a-teens-life-ng-b88641712z
