Latest news with #TawnyaShimizu
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
This runner survived cardiac arrest. Reddit helped him find his rescuer.
Tommy Chan doesn't remember it, but after he collapsed from a cardiac arrest, a woman driving by parked her car on the side of the road and gave him CPR. She kept going until paramedics arrived and took him to the hospital in critical condition. More than a month later, while wondering about the bystander who helped him survive that May night, Chan posted on Reddit: 'Did you save my life?' as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation first reported. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. The post received thousands of upvotes and reached the nurse practitioner who gave him CPR, Tawnya Shimizu. Her daughter, Tessa Shimizu, cried when she learned Chan was alive. 'It's been running through my mind if you were ok,' Tessa replied to Chan's post. 'Seeing this is a weight lifted off my shoulders.' Chan, Tawnya and Tessa connected and met June 28, when Chan thanked Tawnya in-person for saving his life. But Chan, 39, told The Washington Post that he plans to truly thank Tawnya by living 'my life the fullest from here on out.' Chan needed help on May 20, after he finished a five-kilometer run past Dow's Lake in Ottawa around 8 p.m. Chan was walking to his downtown home when he collapsed. One passerby called 911, and two others who weren't trained in CPR tried to do compressions by following the 911 operator's instructions. Tawnya was driving Tessa home from her boyfriend's house when they spotted people trying to help Chan. 'You need to stop,' Tessa, 20, recalled telling her mom. 'And you need to help because you're a nurse.' Tawnya quickly did a U-turn, introduced herself at the scene and took over CPR. The scene was eerily quiet - just the sounds of traffic and the 911 operator, Tawnya said. 'I went into work mode,' said Tawnya, 54. Paramedics arrived about five minutes later and cut off Chan's jacket and shirt to shock his heart with a defibrillator. Tawnya said she continued CPR until paramedics loaded Chan into an ambulance. Tawnya is used to not knowing if all of her patients survive after they leave her care, but Tessa struggled with not knowing Chan's fate. That night, they got sugar cinnamon doughnut holes for comfort, but Tessa cried when she returned to her family's house in the Ottawa suburbs. Meanwhile, Chan woke up in a hospital room on May 22 with no recollection of the entire day he collapsed. He used his smartwatch and phone to try to piece together what had happened. Chan had a cardiac arrest due to a blocked artery in his heart, said Alexander Dick, Chan's cardiologist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. 'Within a few minutes, if you don't have some type of CPR, like chest compressions to circulate blood to the brain, you will start getting irreparable harm to the brain,' Dick said. People who experience a cardiac arrest typically die unless their heart is shocked back into a normal rhythm. About 90 percent of the time, a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital is fatal. Chan underwent an angioplasty, a procedure to open narrowed or blocked arteries, Dick said. Chan left the hospital on May 29 with a sore chest and left ribs. He walked about 10 minutes home, showered, drove to a pharmacy to pick up medicine and relaxed. But Chan didn't dwell on his life-threatening experience. He soon jumped back into his massage therapy classes at Ottawa's Algonquin College, worried about the days he missed. In late June, Chan's girlfriend asked him about the people who helped him that night. That prompted Chan to turn to the Ottawa subreddit on June 25. 'I find out that I survived because someone had given me cpr and an ambulance came soon after,' Chan wrote. 'Just want to say thank you to that individual who saved me. Who knows what would have happened if the samaritan hadn't passed by.' As the post quickly received hundreds of upvotes, Chan began to process how lucky he was to be alive. The post reached Tawnya's 24-year-old son, Joshua, who texted the family group chat: 'The person mom did CPR on survived.' When Tessa checked her phone during a break at a youth volleyball camp where she was coaching, she cried. She and Joshua messaged Chan on Reddit and connected him with their mom. Chan texted Tawnya: 'You literally saved my life in May.' 'I'm so glad you survived,' Tawnya replied. 'My daughter and I have been thinking about you.' Chan got coffee with Tawnya, who told him what happened that night. Chan shared everything that happened to him since he regained consciousness. With what he views as a second chance at life, Chan said, he plans to become a massage therapist and travel to Europe for the first time. Plus, he intends to stay in touch with Tawnya and her family. 'I owe them updates on my health … and any great things that I'm accomplishing in life,' Chan said. 'Because if they didn't save me, then I wouldn't be able to accomplish certain things.' 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Daily Mail
04-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
I had a heart attack and lost my memory... now I'm looking for the person who saved my life on the side of the road
Tommy Chan was on his normal run in his hometown of Ottawa, Canada, when he suddenly collapsed. The healthy 39-year-old was in overall good health, and suffering a heart attack was never a concern, but when he woke up at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute several days later, he had no memory of the incident, the events leading up to it or the four days that followed. Chan was left with the mystery of what had happened. With help from hospital staff and the run that was recorded on his smart watch, he began piecing bits together. He was most likely walking home at the end of his run around 7:50pm on May 20 when he collapsed. Paramedics received a call about an hour later about a man in cardiac arrest on the sidewalk. However, before they arrived and delivered a shock that restarted Chan's heart, a bystander performed life-saving CPR - but she left the scene when paramedics arrived. Aside from a few broken ribs - typical in someone who has received CPR - Cahn emerged from the event relatively unscathed. And when he found out a stranger had stepped in to help him, he set out on a mission to find and thank them. In his search, Chan posted about his experience on Reddit under the heading, 'Did you save my life?' Tawnya Shimizu, a nurse practitioner, was driving down the street in Ottawa with her daughter when they spotted a commotion at an intersection. People had begun to gather around Chan's body, splayed on the ground. A few attempted CPR as the electrical system powering Chan's heart short-circuited, knocking him unconscious, cutting off blood flow, and halting his pulse. With his breathing stalled, his face had turned pale from lack of oxygen. As Shimizu and her daughter approached, she told CBC: 'I could hear the 9-1-1 operator giving directions on CPR and counting out the timing. 'So my daughter was immediately like, "Mommy, you're a nurse. You need to help!"' She made her way through the crowd of bystanders and entered 'work mode.' Shimizu told CBC Ottawa Morning that she introduced herself and said she was a nurse practitioner and took over CPR for the person who had already begun to buy time until paramedics arrived with a defibrillator, a machine that delivers a shock to the heart to restart it during a cardiac arrest. Prior to using a defibrillator, CPR is crucial as it manually replaces the heart's pumping action through compressions, circulating oxygenated blood to the brain and vital organs. Without CPR, the lack of oxygen can begin causing irreversible brain damage within about four minutes, with death following around 10 minutes later. Paramedics arrived with the defibrillator to shock Chan's heart back to life and rushed him to the hospital where he was stabilized. Shimizu and her daughter left the scene but the incident 'weighed on our minds.' She told CBC: 'It's definitely weighed on our minds, to kind of wonder if he was OK and if he survived.' Chan was discharged from the hospital several days later, but a question nagged him: Who saved his life? Chan said: 'If I were a good Samaritan, that would be cool to know that this person is doing OK.' Memory loss after a heart attack isn't uncommon. New York University Grossman School of Medicine says people who survive cardiac events may have difficulties recalling events because the brain is deprived of oxygen while the heart is stopped. So he took to the internet with his 'Did you save my life?' post and was connected with at least one person who was there that day: Shimizu. They connected online and the pair, and Shimizu's daughter, have plans to meet very soon. But before meeting in person, Chan was able to express his gratitude over the radio, saying on CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning show: 'I don't know what else to say. Like, I can't believe you were at the right place at the right time. So I don't know how I can ever repay you.' Shimizu, for her part, said: 'I think everyone who helped you that day just did it because that's human nature.'
