A supermarket worker and customer who helped save the life of a man in an Aberdeenshire park have urged everyone to learn first aid.
The emergency unfolded after customer George Woods saw a 14-year-old, Jayden Fox, giving his own grandfather, Bill Fox, CPR in a car.
Jodi Loudon, 56, a shift leader at Tesco in Banchory and first aider rushed to the scene after the call for help outside the store.
After the alarm was raised, Mrs Loudon took over and helped keep Mr Fox’s heart going until help arrived.
The visitor from Fife has since made a full recovery with Jayden since passing a first aid course at school.
Now Mrs Loudon and Mr Woods are encouraging others to follow in his footsteps by learning the skill.
Family watched on while emergency unfolded
The alarm was initially raised by customer Mr Woods, a handyman at Inchmarlo Retirement Village and Care Home, who saw Jayden performing CPR in the car.
After asking for Mr Fox’s seat to be reclined, he raised the alarm.
Mrs Loudon, a resident of Kincardine O’Neil, was alerted to a medical incident that was taking place by an employee who told her to get a defibrillator.
She said: “I headed out the front door and there was a man in his 60s, who was having a medical incident in car.”
Mr Woods started to him CPR and give him chest compressions, while the man’s family, including his wife Mary, anxiously watched on.
Explaining what happened next, Mrs Loudon said: “I came out and I had to put the defibrillator on his chest.”
Whilst Mr Woods continued CPR and used the defibrillator, she was on the phone with an emergency call handler, however, she was told that the ambulance would not be there for another 11 minutes.
“CPR for 20 minutes is crazy” and is “physically demanding”, she said.
Compressions and defibrillator shocks continued until paramedics from the Sandpiper Trust arrived at the scene.
The charity provides emergency lifesaving medical equipment to rural clinicians to enable pre-hospital emergency care to be provided in situations where ambulance response times are long.
They also offers the skills of a doctor when they are required alongside those of ambulance paramedics and provides responders with the technology to connect them to the Scottish Ambulance Service’s despatch system.
After they arrived, Mrs Loudon took notes for Sandpiper and Mr Fox was stabilised before being transferred from Banchory to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
‘He would have died’
Thankfully, Mr Fox survived and did not have any brain damage, with Mrs Loudon describing the news as “amazing”, despite the incident itself being “traumatic”.
After being in hospital, Mr Fox returned to his home in Kirkcaldy in Fife after being discharged, with his grandson passing a first aid course at school the next week.
Commenting on the experience, Mrs Loudon said: “The doctor absolutely said that he would not have been saved, he would have died had we not done what we did.
“It is really important to promote defibs and the fact that even if you don’t know how to use the defibrillator, it will talk you through it.”
“We live in these rural, small communities and Sandpiper Trust is so important and these defibrillators at halls and churches and stores are so important because CPR would not have saved this man.”
Mrs Loudon and Mr Woods received a certificate of recommendation from the Scottish Ambulance Service for saving the man’s life, as did Jayden.
