Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Harry Slesnick holds the semi-automatic defibrillator he donated to the Southwest YMCA.
Survivor gives YMCA gift with a heart
By Kara Chalmers
Just in time for Valentine's Day, a Saratoga man has made a donation that may have some hearts beating a bit faster. Actually, the automated external defibrillator given to the Southwest YMCA in Saratoga by Dr. Harry Slesnick in memory of his wife of more than 50 years may make some hearts beat, period.
Automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, are four-and-a-half to seven-pound portable machines that can help save the lives of people whose hearts have stopped beating or whose hearts are in fibrillation (beating erratically). Through adhesive metallic pads placed on the victim's chest, the machine analyzes heart rhythms and talks operators through the process of administering shocks as needed. Only a shock can make a heart in fibrillation--which is fatal--go back to its normal rhythm, as long as it is administered quickly, said Mark Johnson, health and safety services director at the American Red Cross, Santa Clara Valley Chapter.
Slesnick, 76, had just finished a workout at the Southwest YMCA and was on his way to the water fountain on Aug. 28, 1992, when he fell to the floor. His heart had stopped beating.
An on-duty lifeguard and another gym patron saved his life by immediately beginning cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The patron was Dr. Patrick Fitzsimmons, a psychiatrist who at the time was certified in advanced cardiac life support. He had just walked into the YMCA and was checking in.
"I was signing in for a swim, and I saw someone running from the pool to the exercise room where the weights were," Fitzsimmons said. It turned out to be lifeguard Aaron Bufton. Fitzsimmons decided to follow Bufton, thinking there might be a problem.
"I found Aaron with Harry, who was lying on the ground near a piece of weight equipment," Fitzsimmons said. Fitzsimmons and Bufton began two-person CPR, and eventually paramedics arrived and took over.
Every year since then, around Aug. 28, Slesnick has invited the Fitzsimmons and Bufton families to dinner. "That's Harry's way of saying thank you to us, and I've come to view it as a celebration of Harry's life," Fitzsimmons said. "He is a real prince, a loving and generous person. Finding out the kind of person he is has made the success of the CPR all the more gratifying."
Unfortunately, for the last few years, Slesnick did not have his wife, Melicent, there to celebrate. She died of cancer almost four years ago.
"They were a wonderful couple, a loving couple," Fitzsimmons said of the Slesnicks.
When the paramedics arrived at the YMCA that day, nine minutes after Slesnick went into cardiac arrest, they shocked Slesnick once and then a second time in the ambulance on the way to the hospital with a defibrillator. Slesnick was shocked a third time at the hospital. After being in a coma for two days, Slesnick left the Stanford University hospital with a defibrillator that had been surgically placed inside him.
Sudden cardiac arrest is one of the leading killers in the United States and can strike anyone, anywhere and anytime. Each year, 350,000 people die from it, according to Red Cross statistics.
Slesnick was lucky. According to Johnson, on average, only about 5 to 10 percent of people who go into cardiac arrest outside of a hospital setting survive with CPR alone. If shocked with an automatic defibrillator within the first few minutes of cardiac arrest, survival rates increase by up to 80 percent, Johnson said.
When he learned how automatic defibrillators can save lives, Slesnick called the executive director at the YMCA, Barbara Fisher and when she seemed enthusiastic, Slesnick bought the device and equipment from the Red Cross for about $3,500 and very quietly brought it into the YMCA and left it on a desk there, as Fisher was not in.
"[The donation] was very in keeping with what I know about Harry and his generosity," Fitzsimmons said. Slesnick says he hopes it will never be needed.
Slesnick does not work out at the YMCA anymore--not because he isn't allowed to, in fact, the opposite is true. With his "best friend," his dog, Doogie, sitting on his lap, Slesnick explains that he was advised by his cardiologist to begin rehabilitation therapy and start exercising after his heart attack. One night, he and Melicent went to O'Connor Hospital so he could begin a rehab program. When they walked in, they saw the patients doing exercises on the floor.
"[Melicent] broke out and just started sobbing so hard, because that was the circumstance," he said. "I told the cardiologist that it wasn't worth it for me to cause her agony. So I didn't." He hasn't begun an exercise program since.
A heart attack may make some people realize how dear life is. But Slesnick knew this long before that day in 1992 at the YMCA. As a navigator on a B-17 plane in World War II, Slesnick's plane was shot down in 1944 and he endured months in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, often with nothing more than slim rations of cabbage or alfalfa to eat. For the past 10 years or so, Slesnick and the other prisoners have met in their hometowns all over the country to celebrate the precious gift of life they were given.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
