A 26-year-old gym buff suffered cardiac arrest while working out. He reunited with the MDA team who saved his life.
It was an ordinary day in the Tel Aviv University dorm gym. Alalon Weintraub, 26, finished a long day studying in the library with his friends, and then went to work out. Originally from Kibbutz Cabri in northern Israel, Weintraub began running on the treadmill when suddenly he collapsed; he had gone into cardiac arrest. His classmates saw him fall and quickly called Magen David Adom’s emergency hotline.
While sending a Mobile Intensive Care Unit (MICU), MDA dispatcher Lita Berzon instructed Weintraub’s friends how to perform basic CPR over the phone and told them where they could find the nearest defibrillator. Defibrillators across Israel are searchable in MDA’s central dispatch system.
“The university students who called MDA quickly were the first link in his chain of survival,” said Berzon. “In the first moments, they were my eyes and hands in the field. They started CPR. Their cooperation played a very significant part in his survival.”
Moments later, MDA paramedic Udi Edri and senior EMTs Moshe Sassi and Shira Hovav arrived in a MICU and continued advanced resuscitation while administering medication and eclectic shocks from the defibrillator.
Weintraub’s heart was beating and his condition was stable when the MDA team transported him to Tel Aviv Sourasky Hospital – Ichilov where he rehabilitated to his full capacity. He can even go back to the gym.
Weintraub returned to the gym recently not to train, but to meet and thank the MDA team that saved his life.
“I’m happy to see that you’ve returned to your normal life,” Edri said to Weintraub, “that you’re not only standing here, but you’ve even resumed your workouts.”
“I fell like a sack of potatoes and died for twenty minutes,” said Weintraub at the reunion. “Standing here next to the people who saved my life is a very strange feeling. It feels wonderful to see you here because it’s means I am alive. Your mission was successful.”
