Hero wife saves hubby; Quick-thinking helps him escape severe heart attack
Published: June 7, 2007
What started out as a day of celebration quickly turned scary for Debbie and Doug Ledger.
When Doug had a heart attack on the way to a wedding, only his wife’s quick action and the help of strangers kept him alive.
“It wasn’t that special,” said Debbie, a registered nurse, on the phone from her Lagoon City home yesterday. “It was just a situation where you do what you do.”
On their way to a wedding in Toronto on May 26, the couple had only been on the road about five minutes when Debbie heard her husband make a noise from the passenger seat. She looked over and saw him having a seizure.
“I was terrified, just like anybody would be,” she said. “I saw 35 years of our life go whipping by me.”
Knowing she had to get help quickly, Debbie pulled in to the nearest house where she thought someone was home and ran to the door, leaving David in the car. After a panicked moment when she thought no one was home, a man answered the door and Debbie yelled for him to call 911.
When she ran back to the car, followed by the man’s wife, who is also a nurse, Debbie said she knew David was gone.
Knowing she had to do something, she dragged her husband’s six-foot, 200-pound frame out of the car.
“He wasn’t heavy to me; it just happened,” she said of removing David from the car so the two women could perform CPR until the fire department arrived.
Firefighters used a heart defibrillator on David and, when paramedics arrived, Debbie accompanied her husband to Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital in Orillia.
“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through,” she said. “I wasn’t heroic. I was a basket case after.”
Debbie, who works as an occupational health nurse in the Toronto area, said neither she nor David had experienced health problems before, but they were impressed by the treatment they received at the Orillia hospital, especially from the nursing staff.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am of my profession,” she said.
“There wasn’t one (nurse) who didn’t treat myself and my family with dignity and with respect.”
Now that David is back at home, Debbie said she still has flashbacks of that day.
She said it’s reinforced her belief that everyone should learn CPR because it could help save the life of a loved one.
She added if it hadn’t been for the help the couple received that day, David wouldn’t be at home recovering.
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