PICKENS — Rotary Club’s District Governor Lance Young and Assistant Governor Cathy Golson stopped by the Pickens Rotary Club recently to congratulate the club on its completion of a service project to buy six portable defibrillators for the community.
“I want to tell you why this project was so important to me,” said Young. “I was 39-years-old and I was a major stationed at the Air Force Academy and I had gone over to the cadet gym with a lieutenant to work out for a while. All of the sudden, my chest started hurting and I didn’t know what it was.
“Well, I finished (the workout) and I felt a tingling from the tips up my fingers all the way up to my elbow and then it felt like someone was sitting on me,” he said.
Lance ended up — at the age of 39 — suffering a full blown heart attack.
“As I was laying there, I started blacking out. The last thing I remember was a paramedic saying to me ‘You gotta breathe, you gotta breathe.’ And then I was out. My heart stopped and I was clinically dead for five minuets,” he said.
Lance said that he was resuscitated by someone using a portable defibrillator.
“I can honestly say I wouldn’t be here today if not for that,” he said.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the only automated external defibrillator currently approved for home use without a prescription is the Philips HeartStart Home Defibrillator, which run around $1,000 a unit. The HeartStart AED can be used on children as young as 8 who weigh at least 55 pounds.
The Pickens Rotary Club has yet to announce who will receive the newly acquired units.
