Lebanon
Derosier turned and saw Dave Kelty, a tall, stout man in his early 60s, splayed out on the staircase, unconscious and barely breathing.
Then her training kicked in. She called for help and began breaths and compressions. One colleague rushed over with a defibrillator while others raced off to call an ambulance and notify Kelty’s family. Derosier’s students, alerted by the hubbub, milled around, asking how they could help.
After receiving a shock from the paddles, Kelty sat up.
“What the hell happened?” he said, according to his rescuers. (He remembers nothing of the incident.)
Paramedics arrived within minutes and whisked Kelty off to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where he received emergency bypass surgery. And just like that, thanks to the gym employees’ quick action and Kelty’s luck in being so close to emergency services, he survived what his doctors said was a 1-in-20 situation.
“I can’t get over it,” Kelty said in an interview at CCBA on Thursday. “Dead on Thursday, cardio bypass by Friday, home by the Olympics.”
Kelty, a 61-year-old semi-retired delivery driver, lives in remote Grafton. If he had had a heart attack at home, he likely would have died waiting for help to arrive. But he also gave credit to the fitness center employees, who responded quickly and followed their training closely.
“ ‘You owe CCBA big,’ ” Kelty’s wife, Joyce, recalled his doctors saying, ” ‘because if they didn’t do what they did, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.’ ”
“You don’t owe us,” said Derosier, whose formal title at the CCBA is program director and safety officer.
She was sitting next to him during Thursday’s interview, where he, Joyce and the first responders met again, hugged and traded stories.
Kelty remembers little about the incident. He felt a little shortness of breath while working out on the elliptical machine, and then headed to the stairs to stretch before losing consciousness and waking up in the hospital.
But as his condition improves — he says he’ll soon be back to driving — he continues to give thanks to CCBA and the employees who tended to him last month.
“I wouldn’t be here if not for you guys,” he told them.
The incident also illustrates the importance of AEDs.
Josh Merriam, a captain in the Hanover Fire Department, helps administer “Take 10 Upper Valley,” a free compressions-only CPR course. In an email this week, he applauded the CCBA for keeping an AED and training staff to use it.
“I would say preparedness is the key word here,” said Merriam, who was not involved in the response to Kelty’s heart attack. “Bystander intervention and early defibrillation provides the affected with the best possible chance for survivability. The time to know how to react during such an event begins beforehand.”
Merriam encouraged area businesses and institutions to follow the CCBA’s example — a piece of advice gym officials echoed, too.
“It makes you proud to be part of an organization that is really committed to community and family,” Shelby Gile, executive director of CCBA, said, adding later that it was “critical” that organizations train their staff in these procedures.
“You just never know when you’re going to have a situation like that,” she said.
The CCBA officials said the last time they had responded to a heart attack was several years ago, which made it even more fortuitous that they had kept drilling and preparing. And in fact, the incident was serendipitous in more ways than one.
“That was our final day (of class),” Derosier said. “It was our test.”
“Glad I could oblige,” Kelty said.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.