Heartbreak spurs family's campaign for life-saving gear
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Chris and Tammy Shipler believe in miracles.
They've kept vigil by their 15-year-old son's bed since Sean suffered cardiac arrest during gym class at Inglewood Junior High School last November. In less than 11 minutes, the boy went from active football player and rollicking teenager to comatose.
The first miracle, Tammy Shipler said, is that Sean didn't die.
The second miracle happened Tuesday when Chris Shipler learned Sean's tragedy hadn't been for naught.
Shipler won his battle to get portable defibrillation units - about the size of a laptop computer - included in Lake Washington School District junior- and senior-high emergency kits. The family publicly announced the victory at a fund-raiser for Sean last night at Eastlake High School.
Shipler contends that if an automatic external defibrillation unit had been part of the standard first-aid equipment at Inglewood Junior High, his son's brain wouldn't have suffered so much trauma from lack of oxygen.
State health officials in the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction predict defibrillators will be in most high schools in five years.
The American Heart Association, Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center and the University of Washington Medical Center support public-access defibrillation programs.
The number of adolescents and young adults who die from sudden cardiac arrest has gone up 10 percent in the past decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The Northwest has had its share.
"In just the last year or so, we've had five teenagers suffer cardiac arrests in the Puget Sound area," said Alidene Doherty, who heads the public-access defibrillation program at the UW Medical Center. "Four of them died. Sean is the only one who survived."
King County is one of 28 study sites in the United States and Canada to determine if accessible public defib units will make a difference in cardiac survival.
"Can we make a difference and at what cost?" Doherty asked. "Schools should have them. Schools have plans for earthquakes and for violence, but they don't have plans for cardiac arrest."
Training can be done in conjunction with a CPR class.
In the Puget Sound area, only the Everett and Bellevue school districts have installed defibrillators in their buildings. Four of Bellevue's five high schools have the devices and two of Everett's four high schools have one. A new program is being launched in Everett seventh- and ninth-grade health classes, where students will spend two days learning CPR and defibrillation operation.
"These portable defibrillators can be operated by a child," Chris Shipler said. "You attach two pads to the chest and the rib cage, and the machine will tell you if you should press the shock button."
Getting defibrillators, which cost as much as $3,500, into Lake Washington schools has been one way Shipler has coped with his son's misfortune. He's also fought to get Sean into special-education classes in North Thurston School District.
"Of course he can't read, write or do arithmetic," Shipler said. "But they can work at stimulating him, making him respond."
Yesterday at the Ashley House, a youth transitional-care home in Lacey, Thurston County, Sean reclined in an oversized chair. A tracheotomy tube was at his throat. He doesn't talk or walk. Nourishment comes through a tube in his stomach because he's only recently learned how to swallow again.
"We know our son's in there somewhere," Chris Shipler said. "We have to reach past the damage to find him, but he responds to us."
The family has other battles to face.
They live in a rental house in Sammamish that has been put up for sale. They're contemplating a move to the Olympia-Lacey area, where the cost of living is cheaper.
Shipler, who normally works in marketing, hasn't been employed since November. Insurance coverage ran out, and Sean's expenses are covered by the state and Social Security.
Families can get by on very little, he said, wryly.
Sherry Grindeland can be reached at 206-515-5633 or sgrindeland@seattletimes.com. Colleen Pohlig contributed to this story.