After getting a second chance at life thanks to an automated external defibrillator (AED), a Sarnia man is making sure others have the same chance he did.
Mike Galbraith went into cardiac arrest at the end of February during an oldtimers’ league hockey game at the Dorchester arena.
He joined the Craig Needles Show with guest host Mike Stubbs on Tuesday to share his experience.
“About halfway through the game, I believe, our line did a shift change, we skated back to the bench and sat down. The gentleman sitting beside me, my teammate, said after about 20 seconds I just keeled over and fell down on the bench,” he said.
“The next thing I remember is basically, in emergency in Victoria Hospital. I heard a couple of noises along the way like the ambulance but I just wasn’t aware of what was going on.”
When Middlesex London EMS first got the call, they recognized the address immediately.
“We recognized it as one of the very first AEDs we placed as our public access defib (PAD) program started in 2012,” paramedic Jay Loosley said.
“We knew the dispatchers were telling the people how to use it and helping them with it and we knew that they were doing CPR. Those are really the first important chains in the chain of survival and with those two things we know that Mike was going to have a great chance of survival.”
Galbraith travelled to London on Tuesday to meet with the paramedics who helped save his life, and to donate $2,000 to pay for another AED so that others will have the same chance he did.
“To me it was a no-brainer. I just had so many different people look after me from my teammates, to the Dorchester players, to the paramedics, and to the London health care people. It was a no brainer to me to make some kind of a donation.”
The AED will be installed in London, though an exact location has yet to be chosen.
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