Posted by ABC Radio in Perth on Feb 22nd 2020
Man had minutes to save his wife's life and he performed CPR with instructions from the dispatcher
Man had minutes to save his wife's life and he performed CPR with instructions from the dispatcher
When a bear-like growl from his wife Sandy startled and woke Graham Harley at 3:00am, he had no idea what was going on.
"I wasn't sure if she was with me or not," Mr Harley told ABC Radio Perth.
"I tried to wake her, I shook her, her eyes were open and she wasn't moving. Then I reached for the phone."
He didn't know it then, but his wife had gone into cardiac arrest.
Fewer than 10 per cent of patients survive cardiac arrest, and even fewer recover without suffering side effects.
Six minutes and the calm instruction from a triple-0 operator made the difference between life and death for Mrs Harley.
Unusually, the couple were later given the chance to hear the recording of that call.
In the call, the operator asks Mr Harley to watch for signs of breathing.
There were none, so the operator instructed him on how to commence cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), which he had learnt 30 years earlier on a first-aid course.
If she's not breathing, then we need to be doing CPR.
"Can you get her onto the floor, flat on her back?"
"You need to place the heel of your hand on the breast bone in the centre of her chest.
"We are going to pump the chest hard and fast at least twice per second; you need to push down at least five centimeters into her chest.
"Now give her two regular breaths, watch her chest rise and fall with each breath, then back into compressions"
Mr Harley kept doing CPR until the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over.
Hearing the call her husband made was "a bit emotional", Mrs Harley said.
"I hadn't heard that before. I was out to it. I had no idea."
The couple have since learned that the early CPR Mr Harley performed was what saved his wife's life.
They are now passionate advocates for resuscitation training.
"The statistics of coming out alive are pretty dramatic," Mrs Harley said.
The cardiac specialist she saw in hospital told them the first three minutes were crucial to survival and avoiding brain injury.
"The specialist was very surprised to see the condition she was in when we walked in," Mr Harley added.
"He was expecting to see something much worse."
Mrs Harley still has no idea why she suddenly went into cardiac arrest that day; she had been feeling fine when she went to bed.
The hospital has been unable to find an obvious cause.
She has since had a defibrillator implanted in her chest which will shock her if her heart stops again.
"Even though it was a long time ago that I did it there was still something there that kicked in."
"It is worth it.