Wigan great-grandad who survived cardiac arrest now determined to ensure defibrillators are available

Andrew Moakes has been checking the potentially life-saving devices installed in Shevington are in good working order and is raising money to maintain them.

He wants to make they they can be used whenever they are required after he suffered a cardiac arrest in October 2020 and was helped by a passer-by.

The retired gardener was walking close to his home in Shevington with his wife Carol when he collapsed.

At the time, he was receiving chemotherapy after being diagnosed with lymphoma – a type of blood cancer – and had spoken to his doctor after having hiccups for more than two weeks.

Mr Moakes, 75, said: “By the time the tablets he had prescribed got to me, I had this cardiac arrest.

"People don’t always realise that cardiac arrest isn’t the same as a heart attack, it’s worse. With a heart attack you are usually still breathing, but with a cardiac arrest everything stops, it’s like turning a light switch off. Because your heart suddenly stops, your blood isn’t pumping round and no oxygen is getting to your brain.

“I was on the floor and had no idea what was going on – I was technically dead because nothing was working.

“My wife was on the phone to the ambulance and they were telling her what to do. This guy was driving past and saw me on the floor. It was in the middle of Covid and he didn’t know what was happening or who I was, but he got stuck in straight away with CPR and kept me going until an ambulance came. The ambulance had a defibrillator and they kept me going until I got to hospital.

"I didn’t know anything about it until I woke up in hospital the next morning.”

Mr Moakes, who has three children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, spent a couple of weeks in hospital and was fitted with a pacemaker with a defibrillator.

At first he was very weak, but slowly he recovered from the cardiac arrest and was able to resume chemotherapy treatment.

It was during his recovery that he read that hiccups can be linked to cardiac arrests.

He was able to contact the man who provided CPR after his collapse and took him out for a meal to thank him, while he also sends cards to mark his birthday and Christmas.

Four years later, Mr Moakes’ heart issue is managed with medication and he takes tablets for lymphoma.

He is busy volunteering in several different roles, including with Shevington Garden Club, Shevington Bowling Club and Millbrook Primary School, and as a judge with the National Vegetable Society.

He has also taken on another task – making sure the defibrillators in Shevington are all in working order.

He said: “I started taking an interest in making sure defibrillators were available and working.

"Where I had the cardiac arrest, there were no defibrillators nearby. The statistics show that if you have a cardiac arrest away from a hospital environment, there is only a 10 per cent change of survival. It shows how important these things are.

"I’m on a mission.”

There are five devices in Shevington which were bought using Wigan councillors’ Brighter Borough funding and Mr Moakes regularly checks they are in good condition.

For example, the lock on one of the defibrillator containers recently became jammed and would not open, so he had to fix that.

He also speaks to people at the buildings where the defibrillators have been installed, such as the new landlord at a pub, to check they know what it does.

The defibrillators also need to be maintained, with new batteries and pads made available, so they can be used in an emergency.

But there is no funding currently available to pay for that, so Shevington residents are doing what they can to raise the money.

Mr Moakes said: “When they come to the stage that they need new batteries and pads, the original funding doesn’t cover the maintenance, so we are trying to put that right.

"Shevington and District Community Association put £250 in the kitty last year to start the funding and we have raised more than £100 since. That will pay for three new pads and batteries that need doing now.

"We have a crowdfunding website set up by Coun Vicky Galligan and we are waiting to see what that yields.”

Mr Moakes hopes people will donate to the crowdfunding appeal, which states electrode pads can cost £50 a set and batteries cost more than £300.

This will ensure the defibrillators will be in good working order and can potentially be used to save lives if someone else has a cardiac arrest in the village.

He said: “Two or three of the defibrillators have been taken to a site where there has been an incident. We have one, I think, which has been used. It shows there are there if they are needed.”

Shevington councillor Vicky Galligan described Mr Moakes as a “real champion” for defibrillators and praised his efforts as a “custodian” of them.

She urged people to consider donating to the appeal to help keep them in working order.

"These are used all the time, on different people, in lots of different circumstances. There might be car accidents or sporting incidents, it can happen to young people and it can happen to fit people, as well as people with heart problems,” she said.

"It gives us peace of mind knowing that the defibs are there and they are maintained.”