Cork paramedic who helped save sister said she was lucky her ducks 'were lined up'
Kieran Minihan pictured with his sister Eithne, whose life he helped to save last August when she suffered a cardiac arrest.
A Cork paramedic who helped to save his sister’s life is encouraging people to learn how to do CPR.
Kieran Minihan, who has been a paramedic in Cork city for over 15 years, said that his sister Eithne was lucky her ducks were 'lined up in a row' after a pain in her teeth turned out to be something much more sinister.
Eithne Minihan and her husband Chris Game were attending the wedding of Kieran’s sister-in-law in Youghal when she started to feel unwell.
Eithne told The Echo that before that day, she had “no aches, pains, not even a headache,” but “that evening I was out dancing with my niece, and as I was walking off the dancefloor I got a pain in my teeth that stopped me in my tracks."
She recalled: “I went and sat down with my husband and said I had an awful pain in my teeth, we couldn’t make head nor tails of it, then I got very hot and agitated and I suggested we go upstairs.
“The only reason I asked him to go up with me was because he didn’t know anyone at the wedding, usually I’d have gone myself and said I’ll be back.”
Eithne said that she realised later how lucky she was that he was with her because as soon as she went upstairs she started vomiting.
She initially thought that this was because of something she’d eaten, but then the pain in her teeth returned, accompanied by a pain in her chest.
“I started crying..saying I’m after pulling something in my chest from getting sick, and my husband said he’d ring Kieran - I said ‘do not ring him, it’s his sister-in-law’s wedding, I’ll be fine once I’m done being sick I’ll go to bed’, we went back and forth about it.”
Chris did call Kieran, who explained: “When I went up to Eithne, I could see we were in a spot of bother - the way she was presenting to me, I’ve been to a lot of these situations before, but I didn’t think it was going to be my little sister.”
He called an ambulance despite Eithne’s protests that he was blowing it way out of proportion.
Her husband Chris returned with the hotel manager Jason, who held Eithne’s hand and tried to get her to breathe with him as she was struggling to do so on her own.
Kieran said that Ciara and Tommy from the Youghal ambulance crew arrived very shortly after he rang, and they could see from the ECG that Eithne was having a massive heart attack.
She became afraid then, asking them “am I having a heart attack?” but Kieran and the ambulance personnel remained very calm.
Eithne said “I had that fear – I knew I was safe, no one confirmed anything, but they didn’t deny it.
“They said we should go to CUH. I asked if it was okay if I changed my clothes, everything was heightened and they felt too tight,” she said.
Eithne said her brother and Tommy exited the bathroom and left her with Ciara, saying “we got my jeans off and the leggings on and, that’s all I remember.”
Kieran recalled how “she started seizing, which happens sometimes before cardiac arrest - we knew we were in trouble, we got her out into main bedroom because we knew we were going to have to work on her, we knew where this was going.”
Eithne was in cardiac arrest, so they started CPR.
They continued this for six minutes, and shocked her three times with the defibrillator until they got her heart back into a “normal-ish rhythm.”
The Youghal fire service arrived to help transport Eithne to the ambulance with advanced life support and paramedics also coming from Cork city.
Eithne explained how she came around to a room full of Youghal fireman.
"One minute I was in a bathroom and the next I was strapped onto a stretcher in a room full of people.
“I didn’t know what was happening, I did panic at first and tried to get out of the stretcher, but they were very calming and reassured me.”
Eithne was brought downstairs where Chris was waiting for her, though Eithne thought he was beside her and had been rubbing the arm of a fireman she thought was her husband on the way down.
She was put into the back of the ambulance with advanced paramedic Tadgh O’Shea, who she described as “an absolute gentleman,” and her husband and brother followed them to CUH.
There she was taken straight to the cath lab where she had a stent put in, and she was able to leave the hospital eleven days later.
“It really was a team effort,” she said, adding “the bride and groom didn’t find out until the next day, even with all this commotion and that alone says an awful lot about how smoothly they work, no hysteria, no dramatics, communication wasn’t even needed - they all knew what the other person needed, only for them, the whole lot of them, I wouldn’t be here.”
Kieran agreed that it was a group effort, saying “her ducks were so lined up in a row, the amount of people there, the ambulance not being too far away – when she started having a heart attack we were straight on her, there was no time wasted.
“She didn’t want an ambulance of course, but I could see it from a different set of eyes, I knew we were in trouble, most people don’t come out of cardiac arrest.
“I wasn’t expecting to be doing CPR on my little sister - she’s the youngest of seven, and within 20 to 30 minutes that night, everything was turned on its head.”
He explained that 70% of cardiac arrests happen in the home, saying “It’s usually on a loved one that people are starting CPR, so it’s a skill everyone should have.”
He and his sister are using her terrifying ordeal and lucky escape to try and raise awareness amongst the public about the importance of acting quickly and correctly in the case of an unexpected emergency.
Ger O’Dea, the Community Engagement Manager for the National Ambulance Service said that a key message from this is "with Eithne, she had highly skilled people around her but whether you’re a paramedic or the local librarian, if you can do good quality CPR and get a defibrillator as soon as possible, then you could be looking at the same outcome she had.
“We’re seeing the benefits all over the country, Ireland is the best in Europe for the bystander doing CPR. 84% of cardiac arrests have someone doing CPR on the scene by the time the ambulance arrives.
“Members of the public are less afraid now to do CPR and use the defibrillator, because it’s an intelligent machine and it will only shock someone if they need to be shocked.
“We are starting to see an increase in people being saved, 30 more people went home to their families last year, and that’s gold.
“Communities are saving lives - ambulances come with fancy stuff, but unless the community are doing the basics right, the changes aren’t great.”
Ger suggested people check out h ttps://becomeacfr.ie/, saying “it shows people how easy it is to become a first responder, and the more of these we have around the country the better.”
Ger has known Kieran for nearly 16 years, and said that he and his sister are very close, adding that it must have been difficult for him, “reverting from being a big brother to a paramedic".
“I can only imagine the emotions Kieran was feeling, being a trained and very experienced paramedic, he knows that sometimes the outcome is not good when this happens.”
Eithne added, “the whole point of us sharing our story is to make people aware of the importance of CPR and a defibrillator - how to use them, to know where they are and make sure they’re maintained.
“Also the symptoms I had - I didn’t have any at first then it was my teeth. As women, we do tend to go ‘I’ll be fine’, I didn’t want to make a fuss at the wedding and take away from the bride, I may as well have worn white to the wedding!
“But you can’t dismiss these things - if you don’t feel right, nine times out of ten it’s because something is not right.”
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