Left to right: Matt Sciaretta, Lyndsey Maylone, Sam Arola, Larry White, Joanne White, and Breanna Nichols stand at the Fire District 10 station in Amboy Feb. 25. discussing how White’s recovery was going.
Last month Clark County Fire District 10 responded to call that started as an animal bite, but once en route it changed to a goat attack, and finally, just before arrival, changed to a cardiac arrest with CPR in progress.
Larry White, his daughter, and grandchildren went out to feed the animals on their Amboy farm like any regular day. Larry White’s daughter saw him take two steps backward while holding back a goat by the horns before falling to the ground. At first, she thought Larry White was pranking them and sat there for a second watching before urging him to get up and quit playing. Soon, they realized something was very wrong — he was having a heart attack.
Unfortunately, Larry White’s wife of 40 years had just arrived and was relaxing inside.
“The kids came in the house screaming so I ran out to see what was wrong and I saw him lying on the ground.” Joanne White said. “I didn’t know what to do except CPR which I’ve had many years of training in because I was a nurse’s assistant. It was actually my first time doing real CPR.”
While Joanne White was performing CPR she yelled for her daughter to call 911. In all of the chaos, their daughter tried to explain the situation: Larry White was holding back a goat before falling to the ground unconscious. This led the first responders to think they were responding to an animal bite, and then a goat attack. Just before they arrived it became clear that it was cardiac arrest.
Within four minutes of the 911 call first responders were on scene and were relieved to see Joanne White performing CPR. The team worked in six inches of mud to stabilize Larry White before life-flighting him to the hospital. Doctors thought he would be brain dead or have some form of brain damage because he went without a pulse for 45 minutes.
“A lot of miracles happened: we just happened to be at the station closest to his house which is normally not staffed, so we were able to get there quickly,” said Matt Sciaretta, a member of the rescue team. “We also don’t normally have a crew of three on but we did at that time so there was enough hands for high-performance CPR.”
For treatment, doctors decided to use therapeutic hypothermia for 24 hours to reduce the probability of brain damage. Therapeutic hypothermia is when doctors lower the core body temperature to about 93 degrees Fahrenheit while the patient is sedated.
After doctors brought Larry White out of sedation and removed his breathing tube he was able to talk to his family. While he suffered a full heart attack and went 45 minutes without a pulse, no damage was done.
Larry White has had previous heart problems.
“I carry nitrates with me because I had a four-way bypass about 10 years ago,” he said. “I don’t recall having any symptoms, or I would’ve taken them. I lost memory from 5 days prior to the event.”
Thanks to the help of the rescue team members Matt Sciaretta, Lyndsey Maylone, Sam Arola, Breanna Nichols, Kim Bealwin, Galen Sarken, Steve Long, Gorden Brooks, and Niki Strano they were able to get Larry White to a hospital before any major damage occurred. None of this would have been possible without the CPR provided by Joanne White shortly after Larry White went down.
Sam Arola, the fire chief for Fire District 10, was very proud of how things turned out.
“I’ve been in this program for 43 years,” he said. “I’ve done CPR more than 30 times and Larry’s the first one to say thank you. I appreciate the heck out of that.”
