For 20 years, Homer Middle School has had the opportunity to become CPR-certified.
Photo by McKibben Jackinsky
Greydon Campbell, an eighth-grade student at Homer Middle School, describes the heart surgery he underwent last summer to repair a torn aorta valve.
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This year, the seventh-grade study in heart health, led by science teachers Margi Blanding and Hal Neace, included a look at how the heart and related systems in the body work. It explored what can be done to keep the heart healthy eating healthy, exercise. It involved discussions on genetic predisposition. Offering the 100 students an almost-first hand look, the curriculum even took advantage of virtual heart surgeries that can be viewed on the Web.
"It's amazing what they can do now," Blanding said of the students' open window to operating room procedures.
Dissection of sheep hearts allowed another level at which students could learn more about how hearts operate.
And, as in past years, the course ended with CPR instruction.
Wedged between the sheep heart dissection and the CPR class was something that really caught the students' attention and brought the study together: eighth-grader Greydon Campbell's description of the injury and resulting heart surgery he underwent last summer after being kicked by a horse.
"The timing was perfect," Neace said of the impact of Campbell's presentation.
Actually, as Campbell tells it, timing played a big part in his experience and the fact that he is alive to tell the story.
Almost a year ago, Campbell had just watered his horse when it bucked and kicked, the hoof landing in the middle of the young man's chest.
"It knocked me out," he recalled. "When I woke up, I crawled to the house and passed out on the door step."
That was where his dad, Chris, found him.
South Peninsula Hospital summoned a helicopter to get Campbell to Providence Medical Center in Anchorage, but before the helicopter could reach Homer, strong winds forced it to turn around. Another plane was dispatched and it managed to get Campbell and his father to Anchorage, where Campbell was rushed to the hospital's pediatric intensive care unit.
Surgery was performed the following day, with Campbell's heartbeat maintained mechanically for six hours, while doctors worked to repair a severely torn aorta valve with a piece of cow heart.
"I'm a real cowboy now," Campbell said, with a laugh.
Although doctors told him to expect a year to recover, he was back on motorcycles within two months. He's also back to riding his horse. And he's looking forward to playing football in high school.
"It's a miracle I'm alive," Campbell said, explaining the precise moment when the horse's hoof connected with his chest and the point of his heart's rhythm at that exact moment. "I could have been killed."
And that made the timing of the final chapter instruction in CPR perfectly timed, too. It was taught by Skip Richards, EMS program manager for Chugachmiut, with the help of the Homer Volunteer Fire Department.
"The students got to see volunteer medics and how seriously they have to take this," Blanding said.
As proof of the course's importance, Blanding told of two former students who used their CPR certification to saves lives: One girl was traveling in Mexico and rescued someone from drowning in a pool and a custodian at Paul Banks Elementary School was rescued by his daughter when he was having as asthma attack.
"It's a pretty neat study, a nice unit," Blanding said. Of the participation by Richards and HVFD, she added, "And it is nice to see the community interested in teaching kids."
