Son saves dad's life after performing CPR for 14 minutes after he had heart attack
A SON saved his dad’s life after he performed CPR on him for 14 minutes after he had a heart attack.

Paul Herriott, from Grappenhall, had just finished playing squash with his son Greg on August 16 when he suddenly blacked out and slid down the wall.

The 70-year-old had been suffering from chest pains for a few weeks prior to the incident, but he put this down to exercises he does with weights and resistance bands each morning.

During the 30-minute match against his son at a leisure centre in Frodsham, Paul’s chest pains seemed to be ‘slightly worse’ than previously.

He later found out that he was having a heart attack for 20 minutes of the game.

Greg, 35, said: “On the very first game he was saying his chest was a bit tight, but he was saying it was probably because he had been doing some light resistance band exercises.

“After every game he was clutching his chest and I was saying ‘are you okay? I think we should stop’, and he was saying no it is fine I’ve probably just pulled a muscle.

“It wasn’t fine, he was actually having a heart attack at that time, we later found out.”

Luckily Greg, who is from Frodsham, was CPR trained as he used to work in the police.

The squash court is located at the end of the leisure centre building and the dad and son were alone. Greg had to perform CPR for 14 minutes before 999 callers were able to contact reception staff at the leisure centre who then brought a defibrillator.

The defibrillator was then used around three or four times by Greg.

Paul was then taken to Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital where he spent a few weeks recovering before he returned home on September 3.

(Image: Supplied)

In total, Paul suffered 10 cardiac arrests and multiple complications such as post cardiac arrest syndrome, right-sided heart failure, internal bleeding, broken ribs, and congested liver.

“If he wasn’t there, I would be dead,” Paul told the Warrington Guardian.

“I thank him for his knowledge, his foresight and his determination.”

Greg said: “It is just lucky that the stars aligned because I had just come out of hospital myself for mental health reasons and a week later is when it happened, so it was lucky that I was out and lucky that he was playing with me because I have done CPR many times before.

“I was actually wanting to play squash on the Saturday rather than playing on the Friday, but my dad was adamant that we were going to play on Friday.

“So who knows, if we played on the Saturday and he had the heart attack on the Friday, I wouldn’t have been there.

“I also wanted to finish earlier because I was knackered after playing and he said 'no. one more game'.

“If we would have left when he said, he would have been driving me home and had a heart attack and it could have been disastrous.

“Everything just sort of aligned.

“Doing CPR on my own dad was something that I’d never wish on anyone.”

Paul, who has always been fit and healthy, is now recovering well.

He is working up his step count each day and aims to get back to his dog walking business.

Greg added: “What was quite funny was the first thing that he said once he came back to consciousness was, “Did I win?”

“He lost four games to two, but as I keep saying to him, he had been playing while having a heart attack.”

Paul and Greg are now aiming to raise awareness of not only the symptoms of a heart attack, but the importance of CPR.

They believed it is vital that CPR training is kept up to date and that more awareness needs to be raised about how important CPR is.

The dad and son have also spoken of how grateful they are to everyone involved in the incident, including the team from North West Ambulance Service and the staff at Liverpool Chester and Heart Hospital.