Streetsboro Firefighter Chris Fredmonsky suffered a cardiac arrest in an optimal place last month -- in a training class at his fire station.
"I can remember coming in to work that morning, doing our truck checks and what we had to do in the morning. I knew we had a continuing education class that the doctor was coming in to teach. Probably the last thing I remember is sitting down," he told WKYC.
Capt. Jeff Miller pointed to "You heard the chair just fly out and here you fell, fell on the floor," said Streetsboro fire captain Jeff Miller, pointing to where Chris collapsed.
Chris was in full cardiac arrest. Fellow firefighters knew just what to do.
"Get him on the monitor and it shows V-fib, which is a shockable rhythm. Um, the heart is basically trying to die at that moment. So, I put the patches on and we shock him, and that's when we started CPR again. I mean, there's like five of us in the back of the squad and we were rotating back and forth," said Tyler Carlton, a first-year firefighter.
Fredmonsky came to in the back of the ambulance.
"Then somebody said, 'Freddy, Freddy, you're okay. We've got you,'" he remembered.
His next memory was waking up in the ICU at University Hospitals Portage Medical Center.
"I had heard Kent Fire and Ravenna sent squads here to cover because my whole shift was out," he said, fighting back tears. "Everybody came to see me at the hospital."
"One of the guys was one of the ones that performed CPR on me. And, he apologized because he felt when my ribs were breaking. And, I told him, I go, 'Brother, you can break every rib I have, as long as the outcomes are the same, every time.'"
He's been fitted with a pacemaker and defibrillator in case of another incident.
His goal now is to get back to the fire station -- in some capacity.
"This year, probably for my birthday ... how people always post, they want this donation on Facebook for their birthday. I'm gonna put on mine, I'd like at least 10 of my friends to learn CPR this year. And along with CPR, when you get trained in CPR, they will go over an AED and explain how to use it so you can be a little more familiar with the machine, know what it's there for and how to use it. They're so simple. Anybody can operate one."
