Saturday, May 11, was meant to be a day to celebrate. It was Lyall’s 67th birthday. But the dinner with family and friends at his home turned into a near-disaster.
He was in the kitchen carving meat when he heard his 92-year-old father-in-law Eddie Willett coughing.
Eddie was choking on his dinner.
Lyall said it wasn’t unusual for Eddie to have the odd minor choking incident, but he was always able to pull himself out of it.
But then Lyall’s wife Nicola called out to Lyall and said her dad was not coming right.
“By the time I turned around, his lips were blue,” said Lyall, who is deputy mayor of the Selwyn District. The dinner was at his Prebbleton home.
Lyall rushed over to Eddie and gave him a hard slap on the back, hoping that would clear the blockage. But it didn't work.
Lyall asked Eddie to stand and, as he did, Eddie collapsed.
The people sitting either side of Eddie held him up while Lyall performed lifesaving abdominal thrusts.
“I applied the Heimlich manoeuvre multiple times over a few minutes and managed to clear the blockage and get some air flow.”
“When dear old dad choked I clicked straight into first aid mode. I was saying: ‘Come on Eddie, come on’.”
After clearing Eddie’s airway, they carried him to the kitchen to put him into the recovery position.
Nicola and another friend had already called 111, one using a cellphone and the other on the landline.
About 30 seconds before St John and a fire crew from Wigram arrived, two volunteer firefighters from Cromwell, who had been visiting family in Prebbleton, came through the back door to help.
“They (paramedics came) in and found he had gone into cardiac arrest. On my kitchen floor, they cut his clothes off and did what they had to do.”
The paramedics cleared everyone from the kitchen so they could work on Eddie.
“As I got up to leave, they were performing CPR on him,” said Lyall.
He and the others waited nervously as the minutes ticked by.
“It was all a jumble; I sat down on the couch and took a few deep breaths because I was exhausted.
“I heard one of them say: ‘We’ve got a pulse’ and that’s when a sigh of relief went through me.”
After the paramedics stabilised Eddie, he was transported to Christchurch Hospital with daughter Nicola accompanying him in the ambulance.
Lyall and his other guests stayed at the house, had dessert and some tea and chatted about what had unfolded, while Nicola texted Lyall updates from the hospital.
Lyall said it took a while for the adrenaline to subside.
Eddie is now recovering in Burwood Hospital and remembers little about the incident.
“I remember going over for dinner then nothing after that until I was in the ambulance,” said Eddie.
“I’m just thankful to be here.”
Lyall, who lost his father at 19, said he treats Eddie like his dad.
“He’s my best mate,” Lyall said.
Eddie lives by himself just around the corner from the Lyalls after moving from Oamaru.
Lyall visits him every day for a cup of tea and sometimes a whisky.
“I take him to the pub and he has a couple of pints every Friday night and if he doesn’t get to go the pub he gets very sad-faced,” Lyall said.
Lyall has had regular first aid training for 50 years. Now he is encouraging others to do a course.
“I’ve spent 50 years as an electrician and for the first 15 years I had regular first aid training every six months and in the last 35 years I’ve had regular first aid training every two years.
“I would like to encourage people to train and do their first aid because you never know, it might be your relative, it might be somebody sitting across from you in a cafe,” Lyall said.
“I feel privileged to have been able to clear his airway and keep him alive.”
