CPR AED | BREANNA SUDANO

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CPR AED BREANNA SUDANO
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On September 27, 2011, two weeks before my 14th
birthday, while playing in a field hockey game
for my high school, I collapsed and went into
sudden cardiac arrest. Two coaches recognized
that I was not breathing and without hesitation,
immediately started CPR. I was also very
fortunate that there were three parents at the
game, who happened to be nurses, who took over
performing CPR for the two coaches. Between the
five of them, they performed CPR on me for over 7
minutes until the ambulance came and used a
defibrillator to administer the shock needed to
reset my heart.
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If not for them performing CPR, my family was
told I most likely would not have survived and
that because the coaches started CPR immediately,
I suffered no brain or organ damage. These
five women will forever be my heroes. Because of
them, I am one of the fortunate ones who fall
into the eight percent of people who survive a
sudden cardiac arrest event outside of the
hospital. I was diagnosed with an anomalous
coronary artery, which is a congenital birth
defect and underwent open heart surgery.
That's my cardiologist, Dr Gaskin, with me in
the picture below. Without detection of this
defect, it was inevitable that at some point in
my life, I was going to suffer a sudden cardiac
arrest event.
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Since then, Ive been able to participate in
Youre the Cure to help encourage legislators to
support more people learning CPR. I was
especially interested in the Maryland bill to
train students in CPR before they graduate from
high school, and worked with legislators and
media to help build support. I was so glad to
see it pass in 2014! Our community needs as many
CPR-trained people as we can get! I was very
lucky that when this did happen, there were five
people trained in CPR who saved my life. Through
this life changing experience, I have learned
that life is truly a blessing and to appreciate
every single minute. Not everyone will be as
lucky as I was. If more people were trained in
CPR, the survival rate for sudden cardiac arrest
would increase and more lives would be saved.