LAKE STEVENS — It was March 2002 and Zachary Furney had just finished a hurdles race at a Stanwood High School track meet. He was walking across the football field with a friend when he went down.
Thinking he’d fainted, a coach walked to the stands and told his mother, Karen Furney, that her son had collapsed.
By the time someone called 911 and the paramedics arrived with a defibrillator, critical minutes had already ticked by. His brain was without oxygen for too long.
Zachary, then 15, was in a coma for three months. When he finally woke up, he was in the hospital for another two months learning again how to walk and talk.
"He went from a straight-A student to learning how to read and write," Karen Furney said.
When she and Zachary walked into the Lake Stevens High School auditorium Wednesday night for the community forum on sudden cardiac arrest, everything came flooding back.
She went not so much for information or advocacy, she said, but to show support for the parents of Merridy Stillwell. Karen knows what it’s like.
"My son died, but came back as a different person," she said. "Their daughter didn’t come back. It’s indescribable … it’s pure hell."
Since 12-year-old Merridy’s sudden collapse and death at a cross-country meet on Sept. 29, the community wheels have been turning. Advocates from the region have seen the tragedy as a chance to get the word out about using defibrillators in secondary schools.
Though paramedics arrived within four minutes of the 911 call and used a defibrillator to try to start her heart, there was no defibrillator on hand at Snohomish High School.
Looking at small towns and big cities across the country, instances of adolescents and young adults suddenly going into cardiac arrest seem rare.
In Troy, Mich., there was 15-year-old Kimberly Anne Gillary, who collapsed and died while playing water polo.
In Suffolk County, N.Y., Louis Acompora, 14, died when his heart stopped after being struck in the chest by a lacrosse ball.
In Western Washington, there have been about half a dozen more young victims of cardiac in the past three years.
Some defibrillator advocates said that because information on sudden cardiac arrest is relatively new, no study has been conclusive in indicating how many adolescents and young adults have been affected.
University of Washington cardiac arrest researcher Alidene Doherty, who is also a registered nurse, has tried to keep track of such instances to convince people that cardiac arrest in young people, while a rarity, is a reality. She and several other experts spoke to the crowd of about 60 at Lake Stevens High School Wednesday.
"In reality, it does happen, and it happens at schools because that’s where kids spend a majority of their waking hours and participate in athletics," she said. "School environments become vulnerable."
Doherty is involved in a national study on what happens when the public has access to automatic defibrillators.
She said in places ranging from casinos to airports, having defibrillators on hand for the earliest possible response to cardiac arrest can often mean the difference between life and death.
The average survival rate of a sudden cardiac arrest victim in the United States is 7 percent, Doherty said. But in places such as Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, where automated external defibrillators are placed one minute apart in terminals, the survival rate is around 56 percent.
It all comes back to time. Even one minute can change everything, she said.
Though it is devastating when a young person dies from sudden cardiac arrest, it is rare and should not keep a healthy child from participating in sports, said Dr. Jeffrey Rose, a Providence Everett Medical Center specialist in the electrical functioning of the heart.
The best prevention is a good physical exam and thorough questioning on family history involving heart disease before a child participates in athletics.
"It’s more than a brief, ‘How are you? Sign the form,’ " he said. "It’s important that a family history be taken."
Dale Larson, whose kids attend the Mukilteo School District, said he went to Wednesday’s session to find out more about what he as a parent can do.
"I feel compelled," he said. "Somebody needs to pick up the charge."
At the session he learned that a King County school district started a defibrillator program for about $2 per person, including children, teachers and staff.
"That’s less than the chicken sandwich my son buys for lunch every day at the cafeteria," Larson said. "If, in the course of the next 20 years the cost of a chicken sandwich saves a life, why wouldn’t we do that?"
Reporter Sharon Salyer contributed to this report.
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
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