Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Defibrillator in the common house

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

We live in a rural area and the fire/rescue chief is pleased with our
decision to buy an AED.
We also have several emergency and health professionals in our
community who are AED trained every year.
And we can get to someone's house from the common house in under five minutes.
We don't have anyone with a DNR at this point, although a few folk may
be thinking about it.

In terms of possible scenarios, we have a community member who had a
heart event (the doctor insists it was not a heart attack) on a cruise
ship. His husband called the ship's emergency number, someone arrived
quickly with the AED and revived him enough to be medivacked to a
hospital. Now he has a pacemaker and is healthy as can be. Without the
AED he would be dead. (And it is clear that even with it he might not
have survived.)

I also have two friends who had enough of heart event to wreck their
cars, but revived on their own (and survived the car wrecks). No AED
required.

Certainly, if you are making the decision by looking for absolutes,
AEDs and just about everything else will not provide the absolutes you
want.

But $1500 for the AED plus $500 per year for training and batteries,
etc., is $6500 over 10 years. In our community of 34 households, I'm
paying $19 per year for the possibility that one or two people might
be given a chance. I'm taking a risk I'm glad to take.

It beats playing the lottery for me, although costs a bit more than
the $5 per year I usually spend on that.

Liz
Mosaic Commons Cohousing in Berlin, MA


On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 2:19 PM, Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L
<cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> So let's imagine a few possible scenarios:
> And from all the imaginable scenarios,  you never know for sure that the AED 
> was the determining factor in survival.
>
> To summarize this reality check: Even with some of us trained in CPR, and 
> even if we had a $1500 AED, circumstances would have to be just right to 
> bring Person ABCDE back to life.
>
> I forgot to mention another factor in Takoma Village not purchasing an AED is 
> that we are in a city with several hospitals fairly close by. An ambulance 
> can be here in less than 5 minutes. So for us the more predictably helpful 
> plan would be to devise a system of alerts for calling the ambulance when 
> people live alone or a housemate is travelling.
>
> An Apple Watch has proved its value many times over.  If the wearer is 
> conscious, Siri can send an email to the community or 911 very quickly. Even 
> in the middle of the night, someone always seems to be online. A phone call 
> is just as fast but it means guessing who might be able to arrive quickly. 
> It’s one call at a time.
>
> This conversation is about AED which are used in absolute emergencies, but 
> most often there is a warning like severe pain during which a person can be 
> encouraged to call for help.
>
> Sharon
> ———
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
>
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-- 
-Liz
(The Rev.) Elizabeth M. Magill
Minister to the Affiliates, Ecclesia Ministries
www.ecclesiaministriesmission.org
www.mosaic-commons.org
508-450-0431