Extraordinarily quick response by emergency services and students’ immediate resuscitation efforts made for a happy ending.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The quick thinking and heroic actions of two high school students and their gym instructor saved the life of a pregnant teacher in the city of Beit Shemesh on Tuesday.
Hen Danziger, 20 weeks pregnant, collapsed right outside the Branco Weiss high school where she teaches as she was on her way in to class in the morning.
Two students saw her lying on her stomach and managed to wake her up. She said she was OK, but then lost consciousness again. The 17-year-olds, who had taken a first aid course, started resuscitation efforts immediately, while simultaneously calling for help.
The physical education teacher, Sharon Chaim, told Israel Hayom that he came down with a group of colleagues when the secretary informed one of the teachers about what was happening. He got there along with the paramedic, he said.
“I asked him if she has a pulse and he said that she’d lost her pulse,” Chaim recounted. “We started doing heart massage. Meanwhile, he attached the defibrillator he’d brought and gave her an electric shock while she was unconscious, all blue like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Those were tense moments….I felt that I was fighting for her life,” he added.
United Hatzalah volunteer, EMT Yechiel Rosenberg, arrived in just 20 seconds since he was up the street when he took the call from dispatch.
He told Arutz7 that he attached his defibrillator to Danziger’s chest immediately.
“The defibrillator gave three shocks as we battled for the woman’s life and for the life of her unborn child. In the meantime, other volunteers from United Hatzalah began to arrive as well as a local ambulance team and joined in our efforts. We continued performing CPR and worked together as a team. On the fourth shock, we managed to gain a steady pulse. We put the woman in the ambulance and to our joy, we heard her begin to cough.”
Cardiologist Gabi Elbaz Griner, who was called to the emergency room in Hadassah Hospital when Danziger arrived, confirmed that she had in essence “died and come back to life four times.”
In an online clip made by the hospital, she added that this was really a “doubly amazing story,” because Danziger’s brother had also clinically died four years ago and had been electrically shocked back to life himself.
She will leave the hospital “with a new friend,” Dr. Griner said, referring to a device that will regulate her heartbeat just in case something like this happens again.
For her part, Danziger said she remembers nothing of the medical emergency after sitting down in front of the school but is extremely grateful to those who helped her.
“It’s very moving to know that I’m in a safe place specifically with the students, that they know how to do this and thereby save my life,” the 29-year-old woman said.