When Karl Arps stopped breathing, his students thought at first he was only doing his job.
On March 25, six Fox Valley Technical College emergency medical technician students were running a routine training exercise with their instructor Traci Blondeau at an EMT classroom at FVTC’s Public Safety Building. Adjunct instructor Karl Arps played the role of their patient. He improvised a chest pain scenario for them; his students knew he could play the part of a cardiac patient convincingly.
The students loaded Arps onto a cot and into the back of a model ambulance. As they worked, Arps’ breathing started sounding “like snoring,” as student Logan Lehrer described it. Blondeau said Arps “looked a little bit funny” at first.
Student Sofie Devalk asked Blondeau, “Is he acting?”
But Blondeau recognized that Arps was taking “agonal breaths”. He wasn’t actually breathing, but gasping after his heart had stopped.
She called out to her students and put them to work. Devalk helped get Arps out of the ambulance and onto the ground. Blondeau and another student, Anela Riehl, started CPR as Lehrer called 911. Other FVTC faculty members and students arrived on the scene, shocking Arps twice with an AED and giving additional information to the 911 dispatcher.
Four minutes and forty seconds after they started lifesaving measures, Arps’ pulse returned and he started to breathe. Around the five-minute mark, he was talking to his rescuers.
“The next thing I remember is Les James yelling at me to ‘wake up, wake up, wake up,'” Arps said. He only realized what had happened while a Gold Cross ambulance − this one outside of the classroom − took him to ThedaCare Regional Medical Center in Appleton.
Arps later learned he had suffered a heart attack. After spending time in the intensive care unit, he underwent open-heart surgery March 28; he was discharged April 1. At a press conference April 29 at the FVTC Public Safety Center, he walked into the room where the medical emergency had happened. Students, faculty and other guests gave him a round of applause.
Teacher’s survival and recovery ‘one in a million’
As an EMT of 25 years himself, Arps knows his survival and recovery were an unlikely chain of events.
“I can count the number of saves I’ve had in my career on one hand,” he said at the press conference. “(A patient) may have a pulse when we get them back in the ambulance, but they end up passing away in the hospital a number of days later. I’m one in a million. I feel like one in a trillion.”
“The entire hospital was talking about my incident. Every time a nurse or doctor came in, they said, ‘So you’re the one that survived,'” he said. “Everything happened at the right time, at the right place.”
The students’ and teachers’ quick response may have helped Arps beat the odds, according to statistics from the American Red Cross. Of the 350,000 people each year who experience a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, 90% of them die − but immediate CPR can triple the chance of survival.
“There was no standing, (no) deer in the headlights,” said FVTC EMT instructor Les James. “(The students) sprung into action, they knew what to do, they knew where the AED was − just amazing.”
“There’s no greater reward as an instructor than seeing them get that and apply it in a real-life situation,” he said.
Teacher hopes students continue in field: ‘I hope I didn’t scare anybody away’
During the April 29 ceremony at the FVTC public safety center, the students and teachers all received recognition for their efforts to save Arps: a special pin and heartfelt thanks from Arps.
Arps also thanked his medical team and everyone who checked in on him and his family.
“‘Thank you’ doesn’t seem like enough,” he said multiple times.
The incident hasn’t diminished Arps’ enthusiasm for his work. Though he’s 72, and still recovering from the cardiac arrest, he plans to keep teaching at FVTC.
“I’m not a person that can just sit at home and twiddle my thumbs,” he said, adding he was “going crazy” waiting at home to recover.
Arps remembered his first time as an EMT responding to a cardiac arrest. “It’s something you never forget, and I hope I didn’t scare anybody away from being an EMT,” he said.
Lehrer, who plans to become a paramedic, said Blondeau deserved a lot of the credit for leading the students in saving Arps’ life. He came away feeling encouraged by the experience: “It’s cool to know that I’d be competent in that situation.”
Riehl said that “it feels really good to see (Arps) walking around and speak his part.”
Blondeau said the students were “virtually flawless” in how they helped Arps: “I couldn’t have asked anything more of them than what they did. They were amazing.”
James said, “They’re going to leave here and make a difference in the world. They’ve already shown they know how to do it.”
Rebecca Loroff is an education reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. Contact her at rloroff@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: When a training exercise became real, FVTC students helped save a life
Reporting by Rebecca Loroff, Appleton Post-Crescent / Appleton Post-Crescent
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