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I'm Not a Hero
This morning started
out in a routine fashion for Christa Boren,
infection control/employee health nurse at the
J. D. McCarty Center for children with developmental
disabilities in Norman. Boren was on her way
to work, driving south on Porter from her home
in the Tecumseh Ridge subdivision. Her plan
was to get into work a little early to catch
up on a few things before her daily schedule
began. You know what they say about "the
best laid plans"… sometimes they don't
work out. In Boren's case, she had to make a
stop to save a life.
"As I was driving
down Porter, just north of Rock Creek Road,
I noticed a man kind of slump to the ground
in the grass just off the street curb,"
explained Boren. "As I got closer I noticed
that a woman had stopped and gotten out of her
car. When I passed them I saw that the man was
lying motionless. I immediately stopped to see
if I could help."
When Boren arrived by
the man's side the woman was on her cell phone
calling 911. At the same time another man stopped
to offer assistance. Boren determined that the
man, dressed in shorts, t-shirt and running
shoes, was not breathing and did not have a
pulse. Boren sent someone to the 7-11 convenience
store at the corner of Porter and Rock Creek
Road to see if they had an automatic external
deliberator (AED) while she began CPR compressions.
The man who stopped to help assisted Boren by
giving the victim two breathes for each of Boren's
30 chest compressions until EMS arrived on the
scene.
"When EMS arrived
they asked me if I needed to be relieved,"
Boren said. "I told them no, that I was
ok. I guess my adrenaline had really kicked
in by that time and I wasn't tired." Boren
continued CPR while the EMS team connected an
AED and shocked the patient's heart back into
rhythm.
It didn't take long for
the story of Boren's morning commute to work
to filter through the McCarty Center with many
of her fellow employees calling her a hero.
It's a title Boren isn't comfortable with. "I'm
not a hero," she said, "I just did
what I would expect any trained medical professional
to do."
While Christa Boren
may not think of herself as a hero, she is to
at least one family in Norman.
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