December 9, 2009

Thanksgiving blessing: saving a life

By John Gleason

Ask Dan Caplis if he considers himself a hero and he’ll tell you “no.”  But he does believe that people were put on earth to take care of each other, and on Thanksgiving Day, he did just that thanks, in part, to an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) he carries in the back of his car.

Caplis, who is a parishioner of All Souls Church in Englewood, an attorney and one half of the Caplis and Silverman show heard on 630 KHOW-AM, was playing a game of touch football in Cherry Hills Village when another player, L. Chesney Thompson, suddenly collapsed as a result of cardiac arrest.

“I looked across the field and he just dropped to the ground; didn’t do anything to catch himself or brace his fall,” Caplis recalled. “That told me this was possibly a cardiac event.  So as other players began cardio pulmonary resuscitation I ran to my truck to get the AED.”

Caplis said he’s carried the defibrillator in his car for more than a year following a tragedy that befell a friend. 

“I’d never given any thought to carrying one of these until the son of a friend died as a result of an injury on the football field,” he said. “If a defibrillator had been available, he wouldn’t have died.  In those kinds of situations you have a window of a few minutes at most and there isn’t always time to wait for paramedics.  So I got one, put it in my car and took it to all practices and games I went to, making sure it was at hand should it be needed.”

Retrieving the defibrillator, Caplis hurried back to where the victim lay.  Despite CPR efforts, Thompson still wasn’t breathing on his own and had no pulse. Opening the defibrillator, a recording in the machine actually talked Caplis through the procedure.

“It was so simple,” he said.  “The paddles were placed on the man’s chest and the AED did the rest.  It diagnosed the heart problem, decided to initiate the shock and fortunately it worked.”

Caplis said the wait was only a few seconds, but seemed to take an eternity before there was a reaction.

“I was praying the whole time,” he said. “It went from, ‘Please God, please God’ to ‘Thank you, God!’

“The moment Thompson started breathing and began moving gave me the most overwhelming feeling I could ever imagine,” he added. “It was like a new life: phenomenal.”

Thompson was taken to a hospital where he is expected to make a complete recovery.  For Caplis, the experience is one that he wants to use to educate people about the AED and how much of a lifesaver it can be.

“The message I’m trying to get across is that while emotionally a situation like this is very intense, mechanically it’s easier than jumping a car,” he said.  “I truly believe that God wants us to take care of each other, and this machine is one way to do that.”