Last month I attended an all-day safety training seminar.

The course covered safety precautions, treating wounds, and how to perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).

I learned CPR 43 years ago in college, so

I was certainly due for a refresher course!

Knowing how to perform basic life-saving techniques like CPR and the Heimlich maneuver may help you save a life someday.

I usually write an original article, but someone passed this on to me and it could help save a life:

“Let’s say it’s 7:25 pm and you’re going home (alone of course) after an unusually hard day on the job.

Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to drag out into your arm and up into your jaw.

You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home.

But you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far.

You have been trained in CPR, but the guy that taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on yourself.

Many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack.

The person whose heart is beating improperly and begins to feel faint could lose consciousness in about 10 seconds.

However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously.

A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest.

A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.

Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating.

The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it to regain a normal rhythm.

In this way, heart attack victims can get help or to a hospital.”

Tell as many other people as possible about this. It could keep someone’s heart beating!

Next Week: Memoir of a Korean POW