Paramedics from Bloomington Fire Station No. 2 gathered Monday with McLean County assistant state’s attorney Aaron Hornsby and his family. Hornsby asked to meet the people who saved his life after suffering from cardiac arrest in November.
Hornsby, 53, said he has no recollection of the day he collapsed.
“I was unresponsive; I had died,” he said in an interview with WGLT. “I wanted to make it a point to get these guys together so I could thank them.”
Hornsby’s wife Christine was with her husband early on the morning of Nov. 7 when he fell unconscious. She began performing CPR and called for the couple’s 19-year-old son Max, who dialed 911.
During a public reception Monday, the fire department credited Hornsby's family with saving his life by calling 911 and performing chest compressions until they arrived.
EMS supervisor Derick Riordan was one of the paramedics on the scene.
“It’s a rarity that we’ll see somebody doing CPR on a down victim before we get there,” he said.
Riordan said every minute without CPR can reduce the chance of survival by 10%. It takes Bloomington Fire approximately five minutes from the time a 911 call is placed to arrive on the scene.
“The fact that the family was doing CPR, we think, is probably the primary difference maker,” he said. “We have all the best equipment, we have the best training, but that doesn’t always equal the best outcome.”
According to the American Heart Association, more than 350,000 people experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrests each year in the United States. Of those, approximately 10% survive.
BFD public information officer Frank Friend says the city of Bloomington is ahead of the curve, with a success rate three times higher than the national average. He attributes that success to Bloomington’s 911 call center and dispatch system, paramedic training and access to quality health care.
"We train for this almost on a monthly basis," Friend said. "The constant is the training, the personnel and the system. The variable is always the patient."
Hornsby was transported to OSF HealthCare St. Joseph Medical Center, where he underwent cardiac surgery. He had undergone 50 minutes of CPR and received 15 shocks to restart his heart.
“I woke up later in intensive care, where different doctors and nurses visited me,” Hornsby said in a statement. “Each of them repeatedly used the word miracle when they described my survival.”
In a follow-up interview, Hornsby said he does not use the word “miracle” often. “The more I talked to people, the more I found out that my survival and recovery was something that was out of the ordinary.”
Hornsby completed cardiac rehab on Friday and has already returned to work.
“That is a reflection of all the concern, all the prayers and all the work that people did for me.”
