A MAN has spoken about the moment he saved his wife's life after she suddenly suffered a cardiac arrest in their home.
Last January, Adam D’Arcy and Sharon were looking after her son Oliver, 11, and his son Harvey, 10, at their Hipperholme flat.
It turned out to be a day the family will never forget.
“She was pottering about while I made lunch when suddenly she burst through the lounge door and said something like: ‘oh my God’,” said Adam.
“Then her eyes rolled back and she went to fall forwards.
"I was standing right by her so I caught her and we fell to the ground together – her whole body was shaking and she wasn’t breathing properly.
"One of the boys grabbed my mobile for me, I called 999 and put Sharon on her back.”
After speaking to the emergency call handler, Adam, who has a degenerative eye condition, was advised that his wife needed CPR until the ambulance arrived.
“I’d never had any CPR training but they told me what to do,” he said.
"Having no peripheral vision didn’t make it easy. I had to really stare at Sharon’s chest, at the points where I was doing compressions to make sure it was in the right place.”
Adam performed CPR for just over a minute until the paramedics arrived and took over.
Sharon was taken to Calderdale Royal Hospital, where doctors told Adam he has saved her life.
Just half of the people (51 per cent) in the UK say they would be able to perform CPR if a loved one had a sudden cardiac arrest in front of them, despite the latest data showing that around 80 per cent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happen in the home.
The figures have been revealed as the British Heart Foundation (BHF) calls on the nation to learn lifesaving CPR during February’s Heart Month, with the message that you’re most likely to need these skills to save someone you know.
The BHF is now urging the public to learn CPR for free in just 15 minutes – using its online tool, RevivR.
The tool means anyone can learn lifesaving CPR skills, anywhere, anytime – and all that is needed is a mobile phone and a cushion.
“My experience has made me realise the importance of CPR training,” said Adam.
“We’re going to sign the boys up and do a course as a family”.
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