Thanks to the quick-thinking of gym teacher Jeff Crewe, 18 year old high school student Ajethan Ramachandranathan, is alive today.
Weston Collegiate Institute gym teacher Jeff Crewe.PHOTO Aaron Vincent Elkaim for National Post
The Weston Collegiate Institute student was in Jeff Crewe’s gym class Friday morning, when the boy went into cardiac arrest.
Crewe quickly grabbed the school’s MIKEY defibrillator and went to work saving his student’s life.
In an interview with CityNews Toronto, Crewe said,
“He just collapsed. There was nothing leading up to it, his eyes were rolled to the back of his head, and his tongue was out of his mouth and there was nothing. No emotion. No nothing.
We got the defibrillator, we put the defibrillator on him, the machine said shock advised, we shocked him.
He started gasping again, that’s when we stopped chest compressions and we just kept talking to him, encouraging him to keep breathing. He’s a wonderful young man with a bright future and that’s all we could hope for, that he would be okay.”
Ajethan Ramachandranathan, April 17, 2012. PHOTO CITYNEWS.
Said Ajethan Ramachandranathan from his hospital room,
“He saved my life. I really need to see him in person and thank him for that. Thank you sir for saving my life.
Now knowing I almost died, I’m going to try to live life even fuller…going to try to do things I’ve never done before,”
The MIKEY was donated to Weston Collegiate Institute by The Mikey Network through our Mikey Young At Heart School Defibrillator Program. 120 MIKEYS (defibrillators), plus the cost of training of up to eight staff at each location, were donated to the TDSB in 2007.
See the entire interview on CityNews Toronto.
The story was also covered in the National Post.
