GOODLETTSVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — You can find them in a lot of schools and office buildings, but do you know how to use an emergency defibrillator known as an AED?
One high school track coach did, and it saved a mid-state boy’s life.
It happened on a day in August that mother Laura Potteiger can’t forget; it's the day her son Taylor Frost -- for the most part -- can’t remember.
"I felt my mind just kind of leaving my body almost, and then I just blacked out," Frost said.
In the middle of a cross country practice, Frost, a sophomore at Jonathan Edwards Classical Academy in White’s Creek, was having a sudden cardiac arrest.
"An ambulance had been called and it was very serious," Potteiger said.
But before the ambulance got there, Frost's track coach had an AED nearby, and knew how to use it, shocking Frost's heart back into rhythm.
It was crucial AED Training that Frost's coach received just two weeks earlier, from the hands of Angel Carter with Project ADAM Middle Tennessee.
"On July 27 they had me come out to their campus and we spent about an hour together, going over how to do compressions and how to use their AED," Carter said.
Angel works with Project ADAM through Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. They are a non-profit that provides free training on how to use AEDs for schools and other groups focused around kids and teens.
"This couldn’t have been more random, but, we were ready," Frost's mom Poteigger said.
"I'd say definitely get training, because if I didn’t have training then I wouldn’t have been here," Frost said.
Do you know where an AED is in your school or workplace? Carter with Project ADAM says that information is crucial to saving lives, as it did in Frost's case. Click here for more information on Project ADAM and how to get AED training.
