ROSWELL, Ga.,None — A metro Atlanta father who suffered a massive heart attack while watching a youth basketball game says a device the size of a loaf of bread saved his life.
It happened at the Queen of Angels School in Roswell.
Sam Hungerbuhler said he was in the bleachers watching his stepson's basketball game when his world turned upside down.
"As I was watching the boys, they sort of drifted up to the ceiling like that, and I thought, 'That's weird; that shouldn't be happening,' and I woke up on a stretcher," Hungerbuhler said.
But before he woke up, Hungerbuhler took a close brush with death.
"All of a sudden he is slinking into the bleachers, non-responsive. He just slides right down," Trish Hungerbuhler, Sam Hungerbuhler's wife, told Channel 2's Tom Regan.
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Trish Hungerbuhler, who is a nurse, began CPR on her husband, who had virtually no pulse.
She said that's when she told someone to run and grab the automatic external defibrillator in the hallway right outside the gym.
"And then the AED did its cycle and it said, 'Shock advised,' and when it said that, I said, 'You got to be kidding me,'" Trish Hungerbuhler said. "His eyes were open, but he wasn't moving. He was not responsive."
After the jolt from the AED, Sam Hungerbuhler's heart kicked in. When paramedics arrived, he suddenly came to.
"Without it he wouldn't be here today, I really truly believe," Trish Hungerbuhler said.
The principal of Queen of Angels, Kathy Wood, told Regan the school bought its first AED after a visitor suffered a heart attack years ago.
"That was just enough for us to say this would be a good plan to have one of these," Wood said.
"I think it's great, obviously for me; I wouldn't be here if we didn't have one here," Sam Hungerbuhler said.
Both Sam Hungerbuhler and the principal said they would like to see AEDs in place at all schools.