Sjaak gets on one knee in front of me and fixes me with big round eyes. Like he’s going to propose to me. “How are you, Frank?” My name is on a sticker on my chest, his on a badge. I chat around a bit. Whoops! Sjaak is already standing up in his sneakers. And while he lets those eyes roam over the rest of the group, he explains how much information he gained from the brief conversation about my physical condition.
He is a driven person. Now he says: “You are in the front! You do something! You can save lives!”
Sjaak is a first aid instructor at the Red Cross, as stated on the back of his blue T-shirt. And this evening he is teaching the CPR and AED course.
Our two sons thought such a course would be a good idea for their parents. And so we are here this evening with the four of us: an existential family outing that paradoxically suddenly also seems to mark a new phase of life. A phase in which you can suddenly be dead.
One of the other students wants to know until when CPR can be given. ‘Let me put it this way,’ replies Sjaak, ‘If someone is taken out of the water with his skates on in the summer, it no longer has to be done.’
He gets to work on the honey-colored linoleum floor with one of the male training hulls lying on a table like victims of a horrific traffic accident. He shows how to rhythmically press the sternum with stretched arms and crossed hands.
Crack-krak-krak does the hull. “You have to keep pressure on the heart so that the blood circulates, the brain can only go without oxygen for four to six minutes. It works just like a garden hose.”
One son says he has read that CPR often breaks ribs and sometimes punctures a lung. Sjaak: “Listen, you’re dead. If CPR is successful, you won’t care about a rib.”
The evening moves on at a fast pace. In groups on the floor pumping, laughing, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is given, while Sjaak walks around, encouraging and giving directions. “Good, tiring, isn’t it! This is top sport.” Or: “Watch out! You have blown a liter of air into the victim, that is vomiting!”
But what do you do when a victim has a tag like “Don’t CPR Me”? Then you can stop, says Sjaak.
It should be remembered that if manual CPR is successful, only a few percent of the victims are left unharmed. This applies to a quarter of the cases if you use an AED in good time, a device that gets a heart working again with a shock. “But,” says Sjaak, “you have to think for yourself whether you can live with it.” So with the thought that you could have saved someone, but you didn’t.
The next morning I read in the family app: “Was a great evening!”