I was really going to come and post something moderately funny today, though I don’t remember now what it was.  Instead, I am just going to note the events of my day and move on.

Today, we went to a corn maze with my parents and my sister’s family.  We had fun.

As is the common practice among many of us who grew up in the Midwest, I used to reject anything agricultural or folksy/kitchy rural activities.  No more!  The corn maze was fun enough to make me get over my adolescent inspired Midwestern-Self-Loathing.  Mock if you must, east and west coasters, it is fun to run around in a field of corn stalks.  Or at least it is fun until the smallest fry in our crew began to demand we carry her through the mile-long maze.

After we wrapped up our day of agri-tainment, I headed back to the car with my sister and her husband.  That is when my sister saw something and started yelling “Someone call 911!”

An older man was lying collapsed on the ground with maybe 5 or 6 people panicking around him.  Several were calling 911, several were trying to get a response from the man.  The man gasped once, then he stopped breathing.  I saw him breathe, so I tried to get him to respond by saying “Sir!  Sir!  Can you open your eyes?  Do you know where you are?”   Someone took his pulse and found no heartbeat.

I have probably taken 4 or 5 CPR classes in my lifetime, so I thought if no one else knew what to do I would have to try to do compressions.  I wasn’t panicking, but I wasn’t particularly confident I knew what to do either.   Before I started, I put my fingers on his neck tried to find a pulse to make sure he didn’t have a heartbeat before I did anything.

Thank goodness, one of the women in the group was a nurse.  She moved quickly, made a mouth shield out of a plastic bag and started giving him breathes and compressions.  My sister, BIL and I got out of the way and went to make sure no cars came down that parking lot row and stood by the road to direct the ambulance.

About 5 minutes into the CPR, someone who was a local paramedic and was also working at the corn maze came running out of nowhere.  He took over the compressions and looked like he really knew what he was doing.  They kept giving CPR and occasionally rolling the man to one side.

It took about 15 minutes before the  rural volunteer squad arrived.  It seemed like a REALLY REALLY REALLY long time.  As soon as the ambulance got there, we left to get out of the way.  I don’t know if the guy lived or died.

I am a little weirded out by the whole experience.  I keep remembering the way his stubbly neck felt when I tried to take his pulse and the way his eyes looked panicked as he gasped what might of been his last breath.

I hope he was ok.