Lifesaver: Sophie Gleason. Photo / Greg Bowker
15-year-old's quick reactions and CPR expertise ensure happy ending to cardiac emergency
Sophie Gleason saved her mother when she went into cardiac arrest by administering CPR she had learned at school while talking to an ambulance operator on the phone.
Yesterday 2500 of the 15-year-old's peers at Macleans College heard the tale as she was recognised by St John in a school
assembly.
Two days before Christmas, Sophie was watching television in the lounge of her family's Bucklands Beach home when she heard her 52-year-old mother, Amanda Gleason, call her name, followed by a loud crash. She found her mother lying motionless on the kitchen floor with her eyes open.
Sophie had a year earlier completed the St John Safe Kids programme - which is taken around Auckland schools teaching older students how to carry out CPR.
"At first I thought mum had been electrocuted because the oven door was open but I think she'd just grabbed it as she collapsed."
Sophie called 111 and, while speaking to the ambulance operator with the phone tucked to her ear, started chest compressions, remembering she needed to do two a second to circulate the oxygen in her mother's body.
Sophie remembered the dummy she had practised on during the course making a clicking sound when she was pressing hard enough. Her mother's chest started cracking, so she knew it was about right.
After a few minutes, Mrs Gleason started breathing again, which St John staff said hardly ever happened by way of CPR once a person had gone into cardiac arrest.
Sophie ran downstairs to open the front door for when the ambulance arrived, and when she got back her mother had stopped breathing again. She resumed compressions until the paramedics arrived.
A defibrillator was used and Mrs Gleason's heart restarted. She was put in an induced coma at Middlemore Hospital.
Sophie found out weeks later that doctors told her father that day that the chances of her mother surviving were slim, or she would at least be in a coma for weeks.
But when Sophie, her father and older sister went back to the hospital the next day, Mrs Gleason was sitting up in her bed talking.
Mrs Gleason is recovering well and last week started back at work fulltime. But her daughter has trouble leaving her alone.
"If there's a bang I yell out to make sure she's okay or if it's quiet for a long time I'll go and see her."
Safe Kids tutor Jenny Ackroyd said a person's chance of survival decreased 10 per cent every minute they weren't breathing.
"Sophie's done everything right. If it wasn't for her, her mother could be dead."
