University of Dayton student Matthew Lickenbrock was driving to class in April of 2015 when a bright flash of lightning struck. It was close.
Pulling into the parking lot, he saw someone face down on the ground. It was 23-year-old student Sean Ferguson. He’d been struck by the bolt. Ferguson wasn’t breathing or moving.
Lickenbrock immediately began giving Hands-Only CPR. Several tense minutes later, Ferguson had a pulse and was breathing by the time the ambulance arrived.
Just about 48 hours before, Lickenbrock wouldn’t have known what to do, couldn’t have helped, and Ferguson might have died.
But two days earlier, Lickenbrock had some time to kill at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. He was waiting for his flight home when he saw a CPR kiosk and decided to give it a try. The kiosks teach Hands-Only CPR. They are sponsored by the American Heart Association and the Anthem Foundation.
Hands-Only CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) is an emergency procedure. It can be used when someone’s heartbeat or breathing has stopped. Forcefully pressing down on the victim’s chest pumps the heart. This keeps blood flowing to the brain until help arrives. It isn’t difficult, but it does require some basic training and practice.
That’s the idea behind the kiosks. It takes just a few minutes to learn the procedure by watching the video instructions and practicing the chest compressions on a rubber dummy torso. To get the rhythm right, the kiosk plays the old disco song “Stayin’ Alive.” It may not be your style, but the earworm tune has just the right beat for proper chest compressions.
Lickenbrock practiced on the kiosk dummy and got a perfect score on his third try. "I'm a regular guy and I learned CPR in essentially 10 minutes and saved a life," he says. "That means anyone else can do the same thing."
Today, Matt Lickenbrock and Sean Ferguson help unveil CPR-training kiosks at airports around the country. Who better to demonstrate how a short airport layover can become a real lifesaver?
Sean knows that Matt’s arrival on the scene of his accident was no coincidence. “I credit God’s grace for putting all these events in place. I feel like I have a second chance at life and I need to maximize that as much as I can,” Ferguson says.
