Restart A Heart Day

Today is Restart a Heart Day. It's a day that raises awareness about the life-saving power of CPR and AEDs. And here to share their story is cardiac arrest survivor and advocate Adam Malinowski. Got it. And his daughter, Lauren. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. And this is close to your heart in a multitude of ways. So take me back to last year when you had the incident at the house and how you all worked together. My mom yells my name, and I run into the room, and I see my dad on the floor. She's on the phone with a 911 operator, and he's telling her to do CPR. I learned it three months prior in health class, so I knew how to do it. So I immediately just interlaced my fingers, put them on his chest, and got to work. Wow. Adam, what were you doing leading up to the attack? It was a busy day and a little stressful, a broken phone, and some other things were going on. and uh that that night it was apparently just too much as i came up to the bedroom to kind of get get ready for the weekend and that that i don't remember much after that after that do you remember feeling any symptoms anything strange that you hadn't felt before prior to just a little bit it was you know talking with lauren earlier that day i was like hey i feel this you know very a little tired today what's going on and you know it was it turned out to be that later but you know didn't didn't realize it at the time and good thing you had that skill set you said just three months prior you learned tell me about your training where you got it um i got it at walt whitman high school it's a maryland state requirement brianna's law to graduate you must learn cpr so i learned on a dummy they give you a mastery test and that's all it is so your mom was there as well the three of you there at the time knowing that you really saved your father's life. You saved his life. What does that mean to you that he's here partly still because of you? I mean, it means a lot to me. At the end of the day, it's just my dad, you know. Yeah, I can see and feel the love between you both. Describe why it's so important then for everyone to learn and you're never too young essentially to start. I mean, you can always help it's better to be an upstander than a bystander and yeah you can always you can make a difference you can save someone's life I never heard of an upstander than a bystander I'm going to use that I love that so you all also have this heart walk that's coming up tell me about your involvement yeah so the American Heart Association in on November 7th is having a walk in DC do it every year and this time we're going to start from the Washington Monument and I'll be there walking as a survivor for the first time. I'll get to wear a special red hat and all that. I'll do the three-mile course. And Lauren and my wife will also be there. And we're, you know, supporting as both, you know, kind of spreading the word of, you know, how CPR is so important. I'm living proof. It really does work. I am here. And, you know, it's something that, you know, is something everybody can pick up. And even that day, they can learn CPR if they want to. Oh, that's an incredible resource at the event itself. You just need to register to be a part of it. In fact, we have the information there on your screen. And we've been covering and speaking with doctors years, weeks now, and they're seeing more younger people with no other major health issues having cardiac issues as well. So I think it's incumbent upon all of us to learn because you just never know. You got to be upstanders instead of bystanders when it comes to our health. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you. Appreciate it.