Yesterday, United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Yoni Uziyahu, experienced something that no parent should have to go through. His son, only a year-and-a-half old, fell off of a table and suffered a severe head injury. The boy lost consciousness, stopped breathing, and almost died. Yoni, utilizing his emergency medical training, intervened and performed CPR on his own son. After bringing his son to the hospital as quickly as possible, the doctors told Yoni that the CPR he administered is what saved his son’s life. After the boy, Elie, was stabilized in the hospital Yoni wrote an open letter encouraging all parents to learn basic CPR. The following is what Yoni wrote. “This morning I performed CPR on my year-and-a-half-old son. I performed CPR on my whole world. For the past 20 years, I have been in the field of emergency medicine. I became a first responder when I was just 15-years-old and took my first emergency medical responder (EMR) training course. After that, I was involved in first aid in the army as a paratrooper during my mandatory service and then in Nitzanim in my voluntary extended service. After the army I volunteered as an ambulance driver and volunteer EMT with United Hatzalah, For the past 20 years, I’ve been helping others and saving the lives of other people. But today, today was the scariest day that I have ever experienced. Elie Chaim, my son, was playing with his sisters when he fell backward off of the living room table and landed on his head and his back. He received a strong blow to his head, apparently a very strong blow, and suffered respiratory arrest. My wife Inbal picked him up and immediately screamed for me to come shouting that he wasn’t okay. Something was definitely wrong. I ran to them. I picked up my son from my wife’s arms. His head was lolling to the side and he was as blue as the sea. I checked to see if he was breathing and he wasn’t. He wasn’t breathing and he had no pulse. My training took over, and like a robot on auto-pilot, I began to perform on my child what I have learned and practiced for my entire adult life, and what I have performed on many other people. I put him on a hard flat surface, made sure his eyes were aimed straight up at the ceiling, opened his airway, checked to see if there was a blockage, a few emergency breaths, and then starting chest compressions. I told my wife to call for help and I grabbed the radio on my belt and in spite of it being Shabbat morning, radioed dispatch for help on whatever channel happened to be open at the time. Not even a minute passed and the first responder from United Hatzalah was inside my house helping me perform CPR. An ambulance team from the organization showed up two minutes later. We ran to the ambulance as I was holding my son in my arms and we flew to Kaplan hospital. He began to breathe once more, but very faintly. His head was still drooped to the side and he was only semi-conscious. It was scary. The team of volunteers who accompanied me gave me as much support as possible and when we […]
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