Brad Westland wants you to do something, no matter who you are, where you live or where you work or go to school. Westland, the head football coach at Waseca High School, knows he is lucky to be alive and he wants others to have the second chance he’s getting.
His heart stopped beating during a game
two weeks ago. Westland collapsed on the sideline and athletic trainers from Waseca
and St. Peter (the visiting team), joined by a nurse who was in the stands and
others, absolutely saved his life. They maintained his airway, they did chest
compressions, they used an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) to shock his
heart.
Westland was fortunate. When he was struck
by sudden cardiac arrest, he was surrounded by people who were trained in
life-saving skills, at a school that had implemented plans to handle such a
crisis.
“You’d better
put in (this story) the importance of CPR training and having AEDs available,”
Brad told me as we talked this week. “If one person hears it and does it, or
one person in the crowd that night gets a checkup or asks at work, ‘Where’s our
AED,’ or gets trained in CPR, it will be worth it.”
Westland, 48, is a Blue Earth native who teaches
U.S. history and psychology in Waseca. He has been the Bluejays head football
coach for 16 years. He was hospitalized in Mankato from Friday night until going
home on Wednesday. He’s tired, he’s getting lots of rest, reading get-well
cards and writing thank you notes, grateful to be with his wife Kim and their
three children. (In this photo, Wendland talks to the team after the final game of the 2020 season.)
He felt lightheaded during the final
minute of Waseca’s 21-13 Week 1 victory. He was thinking of taking a knee and
wait until his head cleared, but he went down in a heap. Troy Hoehn, the athletic
trainer at Waseca High School, ran to Westland and started yelling his name. There
was no response. St. Peter athletic trainer Leah Rutz sprinted across the
field. Krystal Malis, who works as an emergency room nurse at Mayo Clinic
Health System Hospital in Waseca and has two sons who play football, ran down
from the stands and leaped over the fence that surrounds the field. Waseca
activities director Joe Hedervare, who was in the press box, rushed to the
field while dialing 911.
“He wasn’t responding to me,” Hoehn said. “I’m
checking on him, trying to see what’s going on to get an assessment. Leah had
grabbed the AED, the nurse was doing chest compressions and it seemed like it
all happened at once.”
Rutz and Malis switched positions between
compressions and the AED. In the midst of stunned silence at the football field,
they heard the siren of the approaching ambulance.
After the AED shock, Rutz resumed chest
compressions. “I could feel his heart beating again,” she said. “ ‘Oh, there’s
a pulse! I can feel it!’ We knew he was beating on his own again. He started
moving a little. Then he was awake. He said, ‘I want to get up, my chest hurts,
can I get up?’
“That’s when it really started to kick in,
what we were doing. This is not a mannequin, this is a real human.”
Malis didn’t realize the person they were
treating was Westland until he woke up.
“Somebody said, ‘Brad, you’re going to be
all right.’ He was the last person I would have imagined,” she said. “He’s been
instrumental with my kids. He’s talked to them about making good choices and
things like that, and I know he’s done that with all the kids. He’s a blessing.”
None of the three medical professionals had ever done this before. They had trained, of course, in all manner of live-saving skills. And the training paid off.
Hoehn and Rutz both work for Mayo Clinic Health
System. Hoehn, who is Rutz’s supervisor, has been an athletic trainer for 23
years.
“I’ve seen a lot but I haven’t seen this,”
he said. “You carry that AED with you all the time, and crutches and other
things you may need. It’s better to be prepared.”
Indeed, preparation was key to saving the coach’s
life. The MSHSL encourages schools to have AEDs readily available, along with
Emergency Action Plans for all teams and activities.
Five years ago, Waseca didn’t have athletic
trainers at most events.
“Mayo started ramping up athletic training
services in our area, and that shouldn’t be overlooked,” Hedervare said. “Five years
ago this story could have been completely different.
“I communicate what comes from the League,”
he said. “We have to have emergency plans in place, we have to practice them,
everybody has to be aware of what’s going on, especially at a practice situation.
If it would have happened anywhere else, I’m not sure our response would have
been good.
“We have Emergency Action Plans for all our
teams. I have heard from people (at other schools), saying they’re going to
take these things a lot more seriously. This drove the point home, that we were
able to implement this at a home event and it went as well as it did. It’s
humbling, it’s crazy. We’re so glad we have the plan in place and everything
worked out as it did.”
As Westland woke up, he wondered where Kim
was. She was waiting for him at the ambulance. As the ambulance began pulling
away, Westland heard a noise he recognized: The crowd was cheering. For him.
“That’s one of the things that’s been so
overwhelming about this whole thing,” he said. “This happened in front of a
thousand people, most of whom I know. To put that big of a scare into people that
are that important to me, it was really hard to wrap my head around.”
The Bluejays played without their head
coach at Marshall last week, coming home with a 19-7 win. The evening before,
the team maintained tradition and held a pasta feed at school. Kim drove Brad
to the gathering, which was emotional.
“I got to talk to them, I got to hug them,”
Westland said. “It was good therapy for me and I think it was good for them. The
last time they saw me it wasn’t good.”
Before and after the game in Marshall, the
players wore blue t-shirts with the word “Coach” on the front and “Waseca
Strong” on the back. Westland watched the game online, stayed in contact with
Hedervare via text and talked on the phone at halftime with the coaches. Immediately
after the game, he and the team reunited via FaceTime.
Westland will have his first post-incident
medical appointment on Monday. Right now there is no timetable for returning to
teaching or coaching.
“I feel fine, I’m strong mentally, I feel
like I have been since I came to,” he said. “I’m groggy, I’m tired, I don’t have
the vigor I normally have. I’m trying to sleep as much as I can and hoping that
gets a little bit better every day. I don’t like to sit around at home all day,
but under the circumstances I’m OK with it.”
Westland has learned how lucky he is to
have collapsed where and when he did. According to the Mayo Clinic, sudden
cardiac arrest is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S, and nine out of
10 people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest away from a hospital do not survive.
Had Westland collapsed while walking to his car later in the evening, for
example, the outcome could have been much different.
“I feel blessed,” he said. “I’m in bonus
time. That’s the term I’ve been using. I really like my life. Every day is a good
day.”
--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of
Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn
and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts.
Contact John at jmillea@mshsl.org
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