Boy's dream saves another's life
Posted By DOUGLAS GLYNN


Brandon Koskitalo and Chase McEachern never met, but Chase's dream is one reason Brandon is alive today.

On Nov. 2, Brandon and his Grade 8 classmates were outside James Keating Elementary School for daily physical activity when the 13-year-old collapsed.

Fortunately, the school staff and his classmates knew Brandon had a potentially-fatal heart condition because his aunt, Sherry Bryant, had alerted school authorities.

So when he collapsed, classmates immediately told supply teacher Elaine Benton, who sent Emma Bickford and Nick Clayfield to the office to alert vice-principal Sara Knight. A third student, Tyler Bourque, stayed with Brandon.

After asking secretary Jan Summerfield to call 911, Knight grabbed the medical information about Brandon and, with special education coach Shirley Taylor Banks, a trained nurse, in tow, headed outdoors.

On the way, Knight stopped outside the gym long enough to grab the school's automated external defibrillator( AED); a device capable of sending an electric shock to the heart.

In 2008, James Keating had been one of the first schools in Simcoe County to receive an AED - helping to fulfill Chase McEachern's dream that every hockey arena and school should be equipped with the device.

A boy who loved hockey, Chase knew only too well the danger of irregular heart beats.

In October, 2005, after being injured playing a pick-up football game at school, he was taken to hospital where the doctors discovered his heart was beating up to 150 times a minute; a condition later diagnosed as an atrial flutter.

He was airlifted to the Hospital for Sick Children, where doctors returned his heart rhythm to normal with a small electric pulse.

He went back to school and aying hockey, but this time, under doctors' orders, wearing a heart monitor.

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During practice, however, Chase's heart would sometimes beat up to 320 times a minute.

After hearing that hockey greats Jiri Fischer collapsed and Mario Lemieux retired because of irregular heart beats, the Barrie youth decided to start a campaign to make AEDs mandatory in hockey arenas and schools everywhere. He even wrote Don Cherry asking for his support.

But, on Feb. 9, 2006, before the campaign had a chance to get off the ground, 11-year-old Chase collapsed during gym class and was rushed to hospital, where it was discovered he had suffered severe brain damage due to lack of oxygen.

After six days, his parents made the difficult decision to take him off a respirator.

Brandon was luckier.

By the time Knight and Taylor Banks reached Brandon he was not exhibiting any vital signs. (According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the odds of survival for an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are approximately five per cent. With each passing minute, the probability of survival declines by seven to 10 per cent.)

Taylor Banks began CPR , aided by Arlene Banks, an educational assistant.

As they worked to revive him, OPP constable Robin Chiasson, also a nurse, arrived on the scene.

Seconds later, constable Peter Hunter joined her and they took over trying to revive Brandon. Chiasson used the AED to check his heart. The device indicated she should administer an electric shock.

She did.

Then, she and Hunter resumed CPR.

"As we e CPR, I could feel his heart suddenly start pounding and he began breathing," recalled Chiasson, a mother of three.

Brandon was rushed by ambulance to hospital in Midland, then airlifted to the Hospital for Sick Children where surgeons implanted what he describes as a internal cardiac defibrillator (ICD) that will automatically induce an electric shock if his heart beat becomes irregular.

(An ICD is a small electronic device installed inside the chest to prevent sudden death from cardiac arrest due to life threatening abnormally fast heart rhythms, called tachycardias.

It is capable of monitoring the heart rhythm.

When the heart is beating normally, the device remains inactive.

If the heart develops a life-threatening tachycardia, the ICD delivers an electrical "shock(s)" to the heart to terminate the abnormal rhythm and return the heart rhythm to normal.)

Last week, Brandon stood on the James Keating gymnasium stage - looked out over the crowd -and thanked the students, school staff, OPP officers and ambulance crew who, in his words were "the heroes" whose efforts had made it possible for him to be standing there.

Principal Gerry Trumpour said the school was thankful to have had an AED.

He said the reason the school has the device -as do so many other schools in Simcoe County -is because of a partnership consisting of The Heart and Stroke Foundation, The Chase McEachern Tribute Fund, The County of Simcoe Paramedic Services, and The Simcoe County District School Board.

In the audience , representing the Chase McEachern Tribute Fund, was Chase's grandmother, Jean McEachern, and his father, John, who said afterward that he remains committed to seeing his son's dream realized.

If you're wondering where Brandon's regular teacher, Gina Latour, was during the crisis that Monday morning last month, she was -ironically -being recertified in the use of operating an AED and administering CPR.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation says that defibrillation, combined with CPR, can improve cardiac arrest survival rates by up to 50 per cent if delivered in the first few minutes; a fact that Brandon knows only too well.

You can keep Chase's dream alive - just as it helped keep Brandon alive -by contacting the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario at 1-888-473-4636 and making a donation to the Chase McEachern Tribute Fund.