The composure of an emergency dispatcher, who explained to a septuagenarian how to give cardiac massage to his wife victim of a heart attack, will allow the couple to celebrate their 50e wedding anniversary in a few weeks.
“Come here”, launched Pierre Leprohon seeing for the first time in his life Martine Charbonneau, the dispatcher who accompanied him in the rescue of his wife.
“If you weren’t here, look, she wouldn’t be here,” says the man, pointing to the “miraculous” following a long embrace during an emotional encounter in which The newspaper has assisted.
Photo Nicolas Saillant
Pierre Leprohon and Martine Charbonneau hugged each other for the first time following the 9-1-1 call two months earlier. Roxane Sicotte, the miraculous, is behind.
Sudden heart attack
On the followingnoon of February 24, Roxane Sicotte, 71, was simply listening to the news sitting on the couch when her spouse heard “a cry of death”. Without warning, the woman has just suffered a heart attack and is no longer breathing.
Distraught, Pierre Leprohon dialed 9-1-1 to request an ambulance. At the other end of the line, Martine Charbonneau, a mother of three children who has only four months of experience as an emergency dispatcher at the Center de communication santé Laurentides-Lanaudière, takes the call.
- Listen to the interview with Martine Charbonneau on Yasmine Abdelfadel’s show via QUB radio :
In a few seconds, the dispatcher helps Mr. Leprohon pull himself together, he who is in shock and talks nonstop. “Sir, listen to me,” says the 37-year-old woman in a firm tone.
“You have to have a directive tone. We may seem stupid or dry, but we have no choice. It captures his attention and there he listens,” explains the dispatcher.
She then explains to the 73-year-old, who has never had CPR training, how to do it and where to place his hands. “We are going to do cardiac massage now. We start: 1, 2, 3, 4”, she then repeats countless times to set the pace for Mr. Leprohon.
Hope
After a few minutes, Mr. Leprohon regained hope when his partner seemed to start breathing once more. “Go ahead Roxanne, you’re gonna get it, you’re gonna get it!” he said, encouraging his wife to breathe.
During this time, Martine repeats to him to continue until the arrival of the first responders, the firefighters of Saint-Sauveur–Piedmont. “When we took her into the ambulance, she was alive, she had a pulse,” says paramedic Jean Lessard.
Mme Sicotte was transported to Saint-Jérôme, then to the Sacré-Coeur hospital, where two arteries were unblocked. Nearly two months later, the grandmother has no sequelae and no memory of the event, apart from her ribs, which are causing her pain due to the cardiac massage of her spouse.
“It comes to get me, it’s thanks to them that I’m here today,” said Roxane Sicotte, pointing to Martine and her spouse. The latter to add: “It is thanks to Martine that we will celebrate our 50e wedding anniversary in June.”
