Russell Young was getting ready for bed at home in East Hampton around 10:30 on the night of March 6, when the 32-year-old’s heart, suddenly and without warning, stopped functioning as it always had before.
“I’m pretty healthy,” he said. “I work two jobs, I do landscaping and I work for the town” — as an inspector in the Ordinance Enforcement Department — “No other heart conditions.” But that night, before he could even get to the bed, he got dizzy and “just collapsed on the floor.”
His wife, Laura Young, who was in the room with him at the time, immediately swung into action. “It all happened so fast,” she recalled last week. “I wasn’t sure what happened.” She thought at first that he was having a seizure, and called out for her sister or father to call 911. “I put him on his back, and as soon as I did, the color went out of his face. So I knew to immediately jump up and start chest compressions. And then once you start compressions, I know you’re not supposed to stop.”
Though never formally trained in CPR herself, Ms. Young attributed that instinct to growing up in a first-responder family and being “surrounded by that basic knowledge” all her life. Her sister, Heather MacPherson, who was CPR-certified, remained nearby on the phone with the 911 operator and took over compressions when Ms. Young was no longer able to continue. “If you’ve never physically done it, you don’t realize how exhausting it is to perform, even for a minute and a half, two minutes, which is a crucial time.”
Her father, Mark MacPherson, an active member of the East Hampton Fire Department for nearly 48 years, brought in an oxygen tank that he was able to connect to Russell until more help arrived. Officer James Gesa of the East Hampton Town police got to them a short time later and, perceiving that Mr. Young had gone into cardiac arrest, shocked him with an automatic external defibrillator to restore his heartbeat. “He’s also a tremendous reason Russell’s here today,” Ms. Young said, noting that the officer’s quick response time and emergency training got them through the “crucial moments” before the ambulance arrived.
“I just remember being very, like, hazy or groggy,” Mr. Young recalled. “The A.E.D. is a pretty powerful shock to your body, so it takes a few moments to come out of that. Then I kind of came to and started to recognize everyone in the room — James Gesa and a couple of the other cops as they were bringing me out to the ambulance.” A first responder himself, having been in the Fire Department since 2016, Mr. Young considered that a good sign, as his memory had not been noticeably affected. “The only thing I could think about was that I was still there, and about my family, in the moment.”
He was admitted to the hospital that night, where he remained for five nights before being released on March 11. He learned that he had gone into ventricular fibrillation, a dangerous form of arrhythmia in which the contractions of the lower chambers of the heart become rapid and uncoordinated, preventing the regular pumping of blood to the rest of the body. “Unfortunately, I did not get any results as to why this happened,” he said, but he now has a small defibrillation device implanted in his chest which monitors for dangerous heart rhythms. “If this were to happen again, it would try to shock me prior to collapsing.”
Sgt. Kenneth Alversa, a CPR instructor for the East Hampton Town police, stressed the importance of that call to 911 at the first sign of a medical emergency. “Whether you’ve had training, or if you’ve never had any type of CPR or first aid training, if you can remember to call 911 the operator has the ability to walk anyone through just about any type of emergency,” he said. When experiencing that “adrenaline dump,” he explained, it is important to know “that you have a lifeline there, that somebody can remind you and prompt you what to do next. In the heat of the moment you forget.”
The department puts together CPR courses for interested citizens upon request, and Sergeant Alversa also suggested reaching out to local fire departments or ambulance companies about upcoming trainings. “When we’re talking about CPR, time is brain cells. Compressions are so critical to keeping oxygenated blood flowing to the heart, in the brain, until we can get that person some more definite care,” he said. “Recognizing that something is wrong, getting help, getting 911 initiated, and then being willing to act and provide compressions — that early recognition is definitely a huge link in the chain of survival.”