Scoutmaster's Minute & Coach's Corner
as part of a Mountain Top Experience

Let's suppose it is 6:15 pm and you are driving home alone after an unusually hard day on the job. You're really tired, upset, and frustrated. Suddenly, you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the nearest hospital, but you don't know if you can make it that far. What should you do? You've been trained in CPR but the instructor didn't teach you how to perform it on yourself. Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this article is needed.

Without help, the person whose heart stops beating properly and who begins to fee faint has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough. The cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep within the chest The cough must be repeated about every 2 seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is beating normally again.

Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital.

Adapted from "Heart Response", a publication of The Mended Hearts, Inc.