Former police officer Greg had already got the life-saving skills in his locker – but never imagined he would have to use them to pull his dad back from the brink
A quick-thinking ex-police officer saved his dad’s life by performing CPR when he had ten cardiac arrests while playing squash.
Greg Herriott, 35, was playing with his dad Paul, 70, when he suddenly blacked out and slid down a wall. Greg managed to dial 999 as he performed CPR for 14 minutes while the leisure centre receptionist rushed to grab a defibrillator. Paul, who has always been fit and healthy, said: “If he wasn’t there, I would be dead.
“I thank him for his knowledge, his foresight and his determination.” In his old job Greg had done “CPR many times before” but never expected to do it on his own dad. He said: “It is just lucky that the stars aligned because I had just come out of hospital myself for mental health reasons and a week later is when it happened.
“So it was lucky that I was out and lucky that he was playing with me because I have done CPR many times before. I was actually wanting to play squash on the Saturday rather than playing on the Friday, but my dad was adamant that we were going to play on Friday. So who knows, if we played on the Saturday and he had the heart attack on the Friday, I wouldn’t have been there.
“I also wanted to finish earlier because I was knackered after playing and he said ‘no. one more game’. If we would have left when he said, he would have been driving me home and had a heart attack and it could have been disastrous. Everything just sort of aligned.”
Before and during the match Paul had been having chest pains, but put thought he had simply pulled a muscle. Greg added: “After every game he was clutching his chest and I was saying ‘are you okay? I think we should stop’, and he was saying no it is fine I’ve probably just pulled a muscle. It wasn’t fine, he was actually having a heart attack at that time, we later found out.”
Doctors revealed that Paul had suffered ten cardiac arrests and multiple complications such as post cardiac arrest syndrome and right-sided heart failure. He also had internal bleeding, broken ribs, and congested liver. Greg even had to administer the defibrillator four times to try and revive his dad after their ordeal at the leisure centre in Frodsham, Cheshire.
Despite how serious the ordeal could have been, Greg revealed that his competitive dad woke up in hospital still keen to know if he had beat his son at squash. Greg said: “What was quite funny was the first thing that he said once he came back to consciousness was, “Did I win? He lost four games to two, but as I keep saying to him, he had been playing while having a heart attack.”
