At the beginning of December, Senior Olivia Pajer, decided to make a change to better the St. Pius X community. She worked with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Project S.A.V.E, athletic trainer Ms. Lashonda Pituk, and Heath and Wellness teachers Mr. Larry Moyer and Mrs. Amie McDougal to get freshman health classes CPR and AED certified.
Pajer was inspired by an inspired by an episode of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” about sudden cardiac arrest in young athletes. The show included the story of Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin who went into cardiac arrest in the middle of a game followed by a short clip “about a basketball player who went into sudden cardiac arrest, and his teammates were sent to get an AED but they had no idea what one was, what it looked like, or where one was in their school,” said Pajer. Lastly, “there was another clip about a volleyball player who went into cardiac arrest during a game, and there was an emergency action plan in place, and the execution of it was amazing,” she explained.
After watching the show, Pajer thought to herself, “Wow this could happen to us during one of our practices and none of us would know what to do.”
After Pajer proposed her CPR certification idea to the school in January 2023, Coach Schonda helped her partner with CHOA, and the plan really took off at the beginning of this school year. Heath and Wellness teachers Mr. Moyer and Mrs. McDougal got CPR and AED instructor certified so they could teach the freshmen in their classes, and Pajer said she “worked with Project S.A.V.E. to get the training dummies and training AEDs for Pius, and they also helped get the certification cards for the freshmen.”
From now on, CPR/AED certification has officially become a part of the Health and Wellness curriculum, for all freshmen. Pajer said that even though she is graduating in May, she will “try [her] hardest to be a part of it for the next couple of years.
“It feels so amazing knowing that I am the reason a life could be saved. This just means so much to me and is a subject very close to my heart,” she said.
Sudden cardiac arrest in young athletes is a serious issue. Dr. Muhammad Aftab, a heart surgeon at UC Health University of Colorado Hospital, said, “roughly one in 50,000 to one in 80,000 young athletes will die each year of sudden cardiac arrest,” and that it accounts for 75% of sports-related deaths. Although it is mostly unpredictable, Aftab said, “extreme fatigue, severe shortness of breath, heart palpitations, lightheadedness, chest pain, extreme nausea, and extreme dizziness” can be symptoms.
As the freshmen learned, if someone goes into sudden cardiac arrest, “CPR should start immediately, and defibrillation ideally happens within two to three minutes,” said Aftab. Aftab also said you should have “someone trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on hand, and have an automated external defibrillator (AED), which shocks the heart back into action, at the ready.” Which, thanks to Pajer, is now possible at St. Pius.
For more information on the importance of CPR and AED certification and cardiac arrest in young athletes, follow this link.