When a Heart Stops Beating. Cooler heads prevail.
Fullerton College student Jared Marchbanks, 18, was running to his car to get his forgotten jersey for baseball practice when he suddenly collapsed in the parking lot.
Lisa Nelson, one of the college’s athletic trainers, had decided for the first time in months to leave campus for lunch and saw a small crowd gathered around someone on the ground. She stopped her car in a red zone, ran over and felt for a pulse. There was none.
Lisa began doing CPR and sent a student on skateboard to tell athletic trainer Juan Cuevas to bring the Automated External Defibrillator (AED). Within minutes, the two athletic trainers were shocking Jared’s heart back to life.
Paramedics arrived and rushed Jared to St. Jude Medical Center, where a new state-of-the-art system to induce hypothermia allowed doctors to not only save his life, but help prevent the severe neurological damage that often follows Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA).
Using technology available at only two hospitals in Orange County, physicians dropped Jared’s temperature to 91 degrees for nearly 24 hours. “When the heart is unable to pump oxygenated blood to the brain, the effects can be devastating,” explains Panagiotis Bougas, M.D., Intensivist, who treated Jared. “Therapeutic hypothermia allows us to reduce the brain’s demand for oxygen and prevent irreversible damage to the brain cells.”
When Jared’s body temperature was gradually returned to normal, it was quickly apparent to elated family members that the confident, energetic and funny teenager they had known—was going to make it all the way back. Then cardiac and electrophysiology specialist, Rahul Doshi, M.D., implanted a cardioverter defibrillator to automatically shock his heart back into rhythm if, or when, it failed again.
Within a week of going home from St. Jude, Jared was back in the classroom. Soon after, he returned to skateboarding, snowboarding and cycling—as well as his part-time job with the City of Irvine athletics department. After college he plans to become a history teacher and high school coach.
Sudden cardiac arrest is almost always fatal. For Susan Marchbanks, the fact that it wasn’t for her son, clearly shows God’s hand. “Jared didn’t park where he normally parked, Lisa Nelson almost never leaves campus for lunch, and it happened almost next door to one of the few hospitals with the technology he needed,” explains Susan. “God intended Jared to survive and He put the right people in place.”
