From Sunburst, October 1999 issue; a publication of Singapore Technologies
Picture this:
You’re driving home, alone. All of a sudden, you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home. Bur you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far.
Even if you’ve been trained in CPR, the guy who taught the course didn’t tell you how to perform it on yourself. Without help, the person whose heart stops beating properly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds before losing consciousness.
What can you do?
Surviving it Alone
Victims can help themselves by:
- coughing repeatedly and very vigorously
- take a deep breath before each cough
- cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest
- repeat a breath and cough about every two seconds without letting up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.
What self-help do
Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs. Coughing movements squeeze the heart to 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 telephone and, between breaths, call 911 for help (995 in Singapore).
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