Man who lived after 40 minutes of CPR raises money for defibrillator charity

In training for the Milton Keynes Marathon, Jan Devenish was 10 miles into a run in Panshanger Park when he suffered an unexpected cardiac arrest on August 2 last year.

Jan and Ruth were joined by their close family for the final mile of their charity walk (Image: Karyn Haddon)

Fortunately the 52-year-old was running with his group, Lindsey Fitness Running Club, and two of his fellow runners were trained first aiders.

"One of my runners said they heard a yell from Jan. We thought he was mucking about because he doesn't like hills and ran back to him, but he was clearly in a bad way," said Lindsey Peters.

"He was still breathing at this time. I'm a trained first aider as was one of the other runners. So got him into the recovery position and phoned 999.

"My biggest frustration was it was just before What 3 Words became known, so I couldn't actually tell them where we were - it was frightening."

Lindsey Peters helped give Jan lifesaving CPR after he collapsed on a run (Image: Karyn Haddon)

What 3 Words is an app developed for the emergency services, which lets you identify any three metre square in the world using three unique words.

She added: "Then my first aider said he stopped breathing so we immediately started CPR and continued like that for 20 minutes until the emergency services could find us."

Lindsey said the wait felt like a lifetime, as the emergency services were further delayed reaching them because the park was locked.

While waiting for bolt cutters to unlock the gate runners ran down to carry the emergency equipment up to Jan.

A further problem was that due to COVID-19 guidelines Lindsey and the emergency services couldn't administer mouth to mouth alongside the chest compressions.

Eventually paramedics were able to stabilise Jan and took him to hospital to have emergency surgery and a stent fitted.

Jan's wife Ruth explained how sudden the events unfolded: "We'd seen him at sort of mile 11 and obviously it happened at mile 12 - there no sign of it whatsoever."

She was told by medics afterwards that they wouldn't have expected him to survive after 40 minutes of CPR.

Jan spent four months in hospital after his cardiac arrest - but walked 20km less than a year later (Image: Karyn Haddon)

"He was in ICU for four weeks, Lister for six weeks and Danesbury hospital for a further seven weeks," Ruth said.

"That was the worst part for us, we couldn't visit him like normal because of visiting restrictions."

It wasn't long before Jan decided to get back in action, but the lack of oxygen he experienced during the resuscitation process has made his recovery a lot harder.

"He only got his defib in March, so he was only allowed to do exercise to a certain heart rate - he wasn't allowed to go over that for a while," added Ruth.

"So we've been doing a lot of shorter walks in the week and long ones on the weekend."

This past weekend marked a big goal for Jan, walking a half marathon while raising money for defibrillator charity Dipps.

Since his cardiac arrest the running club has raised money and purchased a defibrillator for their members in case anything similar happens again. Lindsey said she feels "so much safer now", especially after being told casualties who have a heart attack only have a five per cent chance over someone who gets defibbed - who have 75 per cent chance.

Wanting to do still more, Jan decided to help the charity and give more people access to lifesaving equipment.

So he completed the Centenary Walk in Welwyn Garden City on Sunday, alongside members of his running club and his closest family for the last mile.

He raised more than £1,500 in the process, which will be donated to Dipps to help provide another AED for the community.

Defibrillators hit the headlines recently at the start of Euro 2020 when Christian Eriksen, a professional footballer from Denmark, suffered a cardiac arrest on the pitch and was treated with a defibrillator after his heart stopped.

Ruth said: "That's a prime example of how he got his treatment quickly and how he's made a good recovery. Obviously with my husband they worked on him for 40 minutes, during which he suffered a hypoxic brain injury which has caused him other problems he's had to overcome as well."

Unfortunately Jan hasn't been able to return to his job as an electrical engineer and has lost a lot of his memory due to the lack of oxygen.

However Ruth still describes Jan's survival and recovery as a 'miracle' and Jan remains positive for the future and committed to his fitness and helping give back to people

If you would like to donate please visit: www.goldengiving.com/fundraising/Jan-centinarywalk