A boy’s life may have been saved by a recently added defibrillator at an elementary school in Wakeeney.
According to the Hays Daily News, the Trego Grade School received automated external defibrillators in July, after an instructor at Fort Hays State University approached the school district about applying for a grant to purchase the AEDs.
Seth Kastle, a 28-year-old instructor of leadership studies at FHSU, has had a pacemaker since 2008, so he knows about the need for cardiac assistance.
Kastle and Trego Grade School nurse Mandie Kinderknecht wrote a grant application to Heartland Community Fund, the grant was approved and the district was able to purchase the AEDs and school staff members and teachers were trained on how to use them.
Then in December, Kinderknecht got a call saying she was needed on the playground to attend to a boy who needed help.
Kinderknecht told The Hays Daily News that she knew the boy had a heart condition and that when she reached him, his eyes were rolling back in his head, he had no pulse, and he was turning blue, so she instructed the grade school’s principal, Tavis Desormiers, to get the AED.
After performing CPR, Kinderknect applied the AED’s patches to the boy and shocked him and then went back to doing CPR until the ambulance arrived, at which point the AED showed that the boy had a pulse.
The school’s AEDs are compatible with the defibrillators in the Trego County ambulance, so EMTs unhooked the AED and hooked their equipment directly to the patches already on the boy, who was taken to Trego County Lemke-Memorial Hospital and later Children’s Mercy Hospital in Wichita.
The boy made it home in time for Christmas, an ending Kinderknecht believes might not have happened without the AED.