One local teacher is lucky to be alive this holiday season after suffering a cardiac arrest in her classroom.
This happened on the first day of school back in August, and now Cyndee Hyatt is back on her feet thanks to her colleagues at Anderson High School and the doctors at Ascension St. Vincent Hospital.
Hyatt said it’s been a long few months and the day of her cardiac arrest was terrifying.
“I just know it was Aug. 2 and I was preparing for the school year,” she said. “I don’t remember after that… I was unconscious and I don’t know any more than that.”
That’s when principal Scott Shimer heard that a teacher was down over the radio and rushed into action.
“Ms. Hyatt was face down at that point,” Shimer said. “We rolled her over and determined she didn’t have a pulse, so I started compressions.”
It soon became a team effort, with several staff members stepping in to help.
“Mr. Shimer was already doing chest compressions and Donjanae was checking for a pulse, so I came in and I got the AED pads on her,” said Mindi Richardson, a PE teacher at Anderson High School.
“I am handing her the pads and I turn on the AED,” said Donjanae Chamberlain, the athletic trainer at Anderson High School. “We all got up and stood back. The machine delivered the shock and then Mr. Shimer went back in to do chest compressions.”
Within minutes, they helped bring back a pulse until medics arrived.
“Mr. Shimer was doing chest compressions,” Chamberlain said. “I was the second person just in case he got tired and Mindi was the one giving those rescue breaths. We did that all the way up to the point that EMS arrived.”
It was thanks to their quick response that Ms. Hyatt is still alive.
“Through word of mouth, the doctors said that the immediate CPR and use of the AED was the major factor in helping keep her alive until they could give her the life-saving procedure she needed,” Richardson said.
Ms. Hyatt woke up six days later in the hospital where she would stay for the next several months.
“I met Ms. Hyatt when she was critically ill,” said Dr. Sunit-Preet Chaudhry, a heart failure transplant cardiologist at Ascension St. Vincent Hospital. “Once she had recovered from the breathing aspect, we had noted that her heart was really weak and couldn’t effectively give blood to her other organs.”
Hyatt has struggled with heart problems her entire life but nothing to this extent. That’s when her cardiologist suggested she needed a heart transplant and due to how sick she was, she was near the top of the list.
“The process to receive a heart is a little bit complex but what we do is we base it on their characteristics and how sick they are,” Dr. Chaudhry said. “They are given different priority statuses and Ms. Hyatt was of the highest acuity, so she was very high up on the list. It looks like someone was probably looking down on her because we were able to get a perfect match for her and the heart transplant did exceedingly well.”
Almost two months to the day, Ms. Hyatt heard her new heartbeat for the first time.
“It’s all by the grace of God that I am here and I love it,” she said. “I love this new life!”
Now a few months later, she’s back up walking, talking, and enjoying life once again.
“I feel great. I do. I have never felt better,” she said.
And Hyatt says she wouldn’t be back on her feet without the swift action of her colleagues and doctors.
“I have many (people) to thank for where and why I am here today,” she said.
And to the people who saved Hyatt’s life that day, they say they are grateful to have helped such a kind and hardworking woman live to see another day.
“I prayed for her a lot,” Chamberlain said. “I am happy that my prayers and I am sure many peoples’ prayers have been answered. It’s amazing that I am able to see her physically because a lot of people do CPR and do these things and they may not see the person or the person may not make it. It feels amazing that I am able to use my knowledge and the stuff I have learned to help save a life.”
“The best thing about the group of people that I work with is that they are doing what they do because they care about people and you can tell that through all the actions that happened that day,” Shimer said.
“That’s the most rewarding part of what we do,” Dr. Chaudhry said. “We see people when they are extremely sick potentially near the end of life and you see them a few months later and you wouldn’t even recognize that it is the same lady.”
“I am just grateful we had the AED in the building and staff trained and prepared and able to respond and have the amazing outcome we did,” Richardson said. “She survived and gets to continue with her life.”
Ms. Hyatt is still on her recovery journey but is planning to come back and teach at Anderson High School this fall.
This article appeared on FOX-59.