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HARLINGEN — It was just an ordinary day — at first.

Lily Nguyen and her little sister were shopping for toys at Target when she heard a commotion. A young man was having a seizure, he had stopped breathing, and she stepped in to perform CPR.

And there was another day, a day in November, when another student at the Harlingen School of Health Professions observed a traffic accident and then saw a man with significant injuries. That student, Eathan Cantu, used his training at HSHP to apply a tourniquet.

“I’m blessed that me and my brother were able to do something,” he said. “The training I got at school really helped me because it showed me how to put on a tourniquet and tie it.”

The medical training at HSHP also prepared 17-year-old Lily to help a man who had stopped breathing.

“I saw some ruckus there in the kitchen aisle, and I assumed it was some teenagers making a mess and I was like, ‘I don’t wanna deal with them,’” said Lily, a senior. “Then all of a sudden the mother, I assume she was the mother, she was saying, ‘Oh, this guy is having a seizure.’ At that moment I thought, ‘Oh, this is serious.’”

It turned out the man on the floor of the kitchen aisle at Target was 19 years old and had just been released from the hospital. He had a history of seizures and heart problems. Lily had not been educated in seizures and chose not to approach the victim because others were already attending him.

But then …

“His friend yelled out, ‘Does anyone know CPR!’ so I was like ‘I know CPR,’” she said. “He said, ‘Come this way’ and we both ran to the aisle where his friend was having a seizure. There was another man on his knees, he looked like he was preparing to do CPR.”

Another man standing there was an off-duty first responder. The presence of three individuals taking turns doing CPR and using other procedures was perfect. Lily asked if anyone had checked his pulse.

“The man on his knees said, I don’t know, do what you can do,’” she said. “The first thing I did was get on my knees, and I checked his carotid pulse. But I’d assumed he’d have a reflex there, and every time I checked his carotid artery for a pulse, he would make a forward movement with his neck. So I wasn’t able to get an accurate pulse, so I went to his radial pulse. And each time I went deeper with each press, I confirmed that he had no pulse. So I stated ‘start compression’s.’”

The carotid artery is located in the neck. The radial artery is in the fore arm.

The other man began compression’s while she counted those compression’s. At that moment a Target employee appeared with an AED (automated external defibrillator) which is used to return the heart to its normal rhythm. They removed his shirt to use the AED, and that’s when she saw his chest was not moving — at all. She checked his eyes and they were rolled back. At this moment, she realized, the man was clinically dead.

“It was frightening, but at the same time if I’m scared and I don’t do anything, that man is going to die,” she said. “So, I had to do something.”

Another Target employee appeared with a phone. The employee had called 911, and the operator wanted to speak with someone performing CPR. While the others performed CPR, Lily told the 911 operator the man was not breathing.

The chaos and high emotions were creating a lot of contradictory messages and Lily was becoming frustrated, so when the police arrived and took over she was relieved. And then the fire department arrived and her work was finished.

She is grateful she could help.

Her first reaction when she arrived at the scene was the “fight or flight” mode, but she then set the fear aside and focused on the victim. She later learned he had survived, and she thanked her HSHP training for preparing her.

“If I hadn’t done CPR training, I honestly wouldn’t have known what to do,” she said. “All I know is to do compression’s and go deep enough. I wouldn’t even know what to count. Basically with CPR training I knew what to do.”

Eathen back in November experienced some tense moments too. He and his friend actually saw the accident that caused the injuries they treated.

“We had already seen the man, and we were going to let him cut in, so he could get into our lane, but he had let us go,” Eathen recalled. “There was a turn where he was going to go in, but he was going too fast and the speed limit, it was 45 and he was going about 60 or 70. He was trying to turn but he was going too fast, so we could see him start wobbling and then he clipped the car. It looked like an explosion, it was just so big.”

What he saw when he went to the car was equally frightening if not more so. One of the man’s finger nails and been torn off, there was a huge gash on the side of his abdomen, and one leg was broken from the shin down so badly that the bone was exposed.

“The cops were asking what his injuries were,” he recalled. “An off-duty police officer and a bus driver also stopped. The off-duty police officer supplied us with tourniquets. Me and my brother put it on to stop any possible bleeding. The man kept asking for his phone.”

Both of these individuals have shown how to put learning into action, and they plan to pursue the health professions. Eathen plans to study sports medicine, and Lily wants to be a flight surgeon for NASA.

The post Harlingen health heroes use training to save lives appeared first on MyRGV.com.