When Tom Gould went into cardiac arrest at his home on February 6th, his teen son was horrified.
But he stayed as calm as he could and ended up saving his life.
Tom (56) from Illinois went to tell Brendan (16) that he was taking his daughter Grace to a friend's house when he grabbed the wall and fell.
"I paused for a second and asked what was wrong," Brendan told Today.com.
When he didn't get a response, Brendan rushed to his dad's side only to find that he had turned purple.
Brendan and Grace immediately called the emergency services.
The operator instructed them to perform CPR, which Brendan had never done before.
Apprehensive, Brendan followed the instructions and performed CPR for two minutes, after which the ambulance arrived and experts took over.
"I wasn't really scared," Brendan said. "If I didn't do CPR, he would have died."
Every minute that passes without administration of CPR decreases the chances of survival by 10%, so Tom has Brendan to thank for his survival.
Tom already took medication for a premature ventricular complex, an often benign heart condition.
He had received the diagnosis 20 years prior, but no-one knew what really precipitated his cardiac arrest in February.
Two months later, Tom said he's at "85%" of where he should be, but is still learning to cope with the fatigue caused by his new medications, but he's extremely grateful for his son's intervention.
"The boy is the reason I'm here, I'm sure of it," he said.
Ironically, young Brendan was due to learn CPR just two days after the frightening incident.
A state law in Illinois was passed two years ago that mandates all secondary school students take a CPR course before they graduate.
The law was brought in following the death of a student Lauren Laman at her school, where nobody used CPR while waiting for an ambulance.
SHARE to raise awareness of the importance of CPR knowledge.
