Sorry for this if you may have read it on another forum that I posted it to earlier today but I am still a bit shell shocked from my experience.

I was on the way back from a lovely weekend in the champagne region in France yesterday and on the way back home pulled into a service station on the motorway for a coffee. We were just about to leave and noticed a commotion in the car next but one to us. At first I thought the elderly couple were having an argument because the woman was standing by the drivers door and she was leaning in shouting her husband’s name but it quickly became clear it wasn’t an argument – something more serious was wrong . I went across to see if I could help and assessed pretty much immediately that the old boy was having a heart attack. At this point he was breathing very difficultly and his pulse was weak and erratic. He was grey and sweating and was completely unaware of me. Then moments later his pulse stopped and he stopped breathing . His wife explained the old guy had a pace maker fitted but clearly it wasn’t helping him now.

Shit …. What a thing to spring on me in a motorway car park. I couldn’t get him out of the car by myself and I had to start trying to resuscitate him in the car so I reclined his seat as far as I could and set to giving him CPR . I told my girlfriend to go and raise hell and get and ambulance fast and she shot off to get that arranged while I carried on giving him CPR. After a few minutes a small crowd gathered and thankfully a German trucker named Max offered his help. He knew CPR as well so we continued with him doing the chest compressions and me trying to ventilate the old boy by mouth to mouth. Time dragged on but we kept at it in the car until another able bodied guy came along and with 3 of us we quickly got the old man out of the car and laid him out on the parking bay and carried on. I had no idea how much time had elapsed, it seemed like no time at all but at the same time, time seemed to stand still. We had managed to get him back twice and he breathed a few times before he faded again. All we could do was carry on until the paramedics arrived.

After about 20 minutes from the first intervention the ambulance arrived but through CPR the old boy seemed to have some colour in his lips and cheeks so we were keeping things going and he definitely wasn’t looking as grey as when I first clapped eyes on him but he had no discernable pulse or breathing on his own , at this point I was already fearing the worst but we just had to keep going. I remembered from my first aid training you never stop – just keep at it so we did.
The paramedics took over and set to with all their drugs and electronic equipment but it was all to no avail. They shocked him 4 times and gave him all the intensive roadside treatment they could but after about another 30 minutes they gave up on the old chap and he was pronounced dead.

It was an intensely emotional end to what had been a fine weekend up to that point. I keep asking myself why couldn’t it have turned out differently ? It always works on TV but yesterday the old boy, who’s name was Raymond died in my hands surrounded by strangers in the gutter of a motorway car park…… I know I did all I could and clearly even the paramedics with all their equipment couldn’t save him which is some small consolation I suppose but it seemed so sad that anyone should die like this. .

RIP Raymond , sorry I couldn’t do better for you.

PS: The irony of this tragedy is it turns out that Max the German trucker is a motor cycle training instructor in Germany and he runs track days for Suzuki Germany and rides and R1200GS as his private bike. Two complete stangers thrown together by fate both GSers trying to save another man's life. How wierd is that...?

PPS: The moral of this story is if you haven't been trained in CPR go and get yourself trained because at least today I can look at myself in the mirror and say I tried to save a fellow human being's life . Had I not been able to, like many of the nearby onlookers yesterday and the outcome had been the same as a result not trying I couldn't imagine how I would feel today.

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...on the road to nowhere...

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