Incident stresses the importance of hands-on CPR

By Robert Williams

Editor

Otto Hanson, 10, was welcomed back to Frazee-Vergas Elementary School on Thursday, April 9, in parade fashion after suffering a cardiac event at his home in late March. Hanson arrived with his family and waved to his fellow students out of a sunroof in a parade order that included vehicles and ranking members of Frazee Rescue, Frazee Police, Frazee Fire and the Becker County Sheriff’s Department.

“Everything had to line up just right for it to happen,” Otto’s mother Dawn Hanson said.

That quote is true both for the parade and for Otto’s survival, much like tears shed during the event and Otto’s recovery eventually becoming tears of joy Thursday afternoon as fellow employees raced to Dawn and Otto to embrace them and welcome them back. 

Dawn is a media center paraprofessional at the elementary school.

Dawn and her husband Joe tried for many years to have children and their daughter Keela was born nine weeks early with a congenital heart block (CHB). 

CHB is a rare disruption of the fetal heart’s electrical system, occurring when electrical signals between the upper and lower chambers are blocked, often detected between 18–30 weeks of pregnancy.

Otto was born with the same condition. 

Eventually, Dawn was diagnosed with lupus. The couple found out lupus caused Dawn’s body to attack her children’s hearts in the womb. Otto had a full blockage at week 20.

“We knew that he would have congenital heart block also,” said Dawn. “It’s something that we’ve never not talked about with the kids. They fully understand. They will tell you their own story. They fully understand what is wrong with their hearts and why they have a pacemaker and there is nothing that will ever change it. There is no surgery, no magic pill that will unblock their hearts. They know they will have pacemakers, or now, Otto with a defibrillator, for the rest of their lives.”

Otto has had a pacemaker since birth. He was in another room away from Dawn and Keela, when three skipped heartbeats triggered his pacemaker but it fired in between the beats and caused Otto to go into cardiac arrest.

“I heard a squeak of some kind; I thought he was having a bad dream and I thought I should go wake him up,” said Dawn. “I went to him, shook him a little bit. I tickled his feet and he wouldn’t respond. I rolled him over and he was not breathing and he was blue.”

Otto had been resting in Dawn’s bedroom, which also made a big difference.

“Had he been in his room with the radio on I may not have heard that,” she said. “I don’t know why I heard it. We were talking and his guardian angels were watching over him.”

Dawn began CPR before handing off to Keela while calling 911 and communicating with first responders. Keela also has a pacemaker, but has never had an event like Otto suffered. Dawn continued compressions and yelling at Otto to breathe.

“It just had to happen; did I want to do it? No. I never wanted to do CPR on my child. I did it because that’s what we do as a parent. There’s no choice,” Dawn said

It took time for all the emotions to flood into Dawn as she had been getting by on adrenaline going from a normal relaxing moment at home into full life-saving mode, then a lifeflight to Fargo and a transfer to the Twin Cities.

“We were very lucky with the cardiac arrest that other things lined up and God got the right people there,” Dawn said.

Otto’s heart was shocked by emergency personnel three times before he regained consciousness.

“He shows no deficits, no heart or brain damage because we heard him quick enough,” said Dawn.

Defibrillators do not always work as expected. Automated external defibrillators (AEDs) must detect specific, shockable heart rhythms (like ventricular fibrillation) to fire. They analyze the heart’s electrical activity and will not deliver a shock if they detect no electrical activity or a normal rhythm.

“The first officer…his did not work because they did not detect the heartbeat,” Dawn said.

Thankfully, the second attempt was successful, although first responders thought the defibrillator detected the pacemaker trying to pace Otto’s heart again more than detecting an actual heartbeat.

“It was able to shock him three times to get him back,” Dawn said.

Family members were also able to race to the scene to help. The family has cousins on the Carsonville Fire and Rescue squad.

“Again, something lined up. My cousin Jake left his Becker County dispatcher job 45 minutes late that day but he drives past our road to get home so he was within five miles and he was the second responder on the scene,” Dawn said. “He was the one that was doing CPR on Otto.”

Jake’s hands-on CPR is what gave Otto a chance to survive. Having witnessed that, Dawn has quickly become a proponent of talking about hands-on CPR and how important it is.

“If it’s started soon enough it’s going to keep oxygen flowing throughout the body and to the brain,” she said. “It’s going to keep the heart pumping even if the heart isn’t pumping. You’re still making the heart beat and when the defibrillator gets there hopefully there is something for that defibrillator to find. The CPR that was done on Otto to keep him alive made it so that the defibrillator could shock him back into rhythm and back into life.”

Kids at Frazee-Vergas Elementary utilize an American Heart Association program called Kids Heart Challenge. Mrs. Tappe leads the program and one of the videos involved in the program teaches kids about hands-on CPR.

“We hadn’t set it up yet but I ended up watching it with Otto in the hospital,” Dawn said. “It’s not simple, but it’s something that they can learn easily.”

Hanson also stressed that CPR is different at three stages of life, infant, childhood and adulthood and a lot of people do not know those differences.

Dawn’s retelling of the incident is harrowing and the story, along with the family’s emotions, went up and down—kind of like a heartbeat.

“I was so confused,” she said. “Thursday night was when things changed forever. “He played at school all day; he was fine.”

Otto was intubated by 9 p.m., on Thursday night.

“I heard that and broke down, because they don’t come off that,” said Dawn. “Those thoughts are hard not to have come through but it’s nice to not have to worry about it in that factor now. As everything was going wrong everything was going right too. I just didn’t see it at the time.”

Otto also had his own plan and extubation occurred early the following afternoon.

“He was a rock star,” said Dawn. “The doctor said, ‘He’s fighting it; he wants off.’”

By the time the defibrillator was implanted, feelings of relief were on the way for a worried mom.

“I feel a little bit more at ease knowing that he has that now,” said Hanson. “I would do it again because it’s the only thing that kept him here.”

Last Tuesday, the family made a return trip to Minneapolis to assure that everything was healing properly and Otto was able to be back by Thursday to enjoy his victory parade.

“I can tell he’s feeling better because he’s sassier and he wants to be outside and playing but he has to be careful not to put his arms above his heart and he can’t take a hit to it right now because it’s not fully grown into his heart,” said Dawn. 

Not surprising, Otto has a 10-year-old’s perspective.

“He understands it but I don’t think that he really cares,” Dawn laughed. “He wants to be wet and muddy. He wants to play and just go, go, go constantly. He’s getting better and stronger everyday and we appreciate every friend, family member and rescue worker that came to our help that day. We can’t ever thank them enough.”

Many of those people were at Thursday’s parade sporting “Otto’s Army” T-shirts and a number of people made trips to the hospital at late hours to help a struggling family.

“The whole community, Cindy Wishnak, Sarah Prellwitz, people at school, phone calls, a lot of texts, everybody has been showing their support. Our church, Sacred Heart Church, have been big supporters,” said Dawn.

Father Adam Hamness joined the family in Fargo.

“He confirmed Otto, just in case. He didn’t have to do that at 1:30 in the morning,” Dawn said. “Even when we got to Minneapolis, the priest from our Minneapolis parish came up and blessed Otto too. We celebrated Easter with all four of us and a big family and loved it all.”