Donna Hancock
IPFS Letters to the Editor • Health and Physical Fitness
HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE
• LetterFrom a Freedom's Phoenix Reader:
Let's say it's 6:15pm and you're going home (alone of course),
...after an unusually hard day on the job. You're really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you start
experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to drag out into your arm
and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles (8kms) from the hospital
nearest your home. Unfortunately you don't know if you'll be able to make it
that far. You have been trained in CPR, but the guy that taught the course
did not tell you how to perform it on yourself.
HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE:
Since many people are alone when they suffer a
heart attack, without help, the person whose heart is beating improperly and
who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing
consciousness. However, victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly
and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the
cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside
the chest.
A breath and a cough must be repeated about every
two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to
be beating normally again. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and
coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The
squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this
way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital.




