TUSCOLA, Ill. (WCIA) – On June 17, David Connour got a second chance at life. In return, the man who saved him got a new best friend.
“He is special to me. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here,” he said.
Connour was helping build a house when he collapsed outside. Luckily, former ICU nurse Jordon Baird lives next door, and he jumped into action.
“If I wasn’t there, he would have died. And that’s the only difference – is that in a hospital, lots of people respond to codes. In this situation, it was only me,” Baird said.
He was running late with five minutes to spare. That is until he spotted a “code blue” as he headed out the door.
“I walked over there; I could see Dave laying on the ground. And he wasn’t breathing, really, he was taking very few breaths,” he said.
He immediately recognized Connour on the ground – a builder who had previously worked on his house. He checked for a pulse and couldn’t feel one. Then, those five minutes turned into the difference between life and death. Baird gave Connour chest compressions until EMS showed up, then remained on the scene to help.
“At that point in time, his heart wasn’t restarting. So we got him on the stretcher, and they loaded him up in the ambulance. And I thought about him all night, but I didn’t know how he did. And I didn’t I didn’t have anybody to call to check,” he said.
He wasn’t sure if Connour made it until his family showed up at his house to thank him.
“My doorbell rang and I opened the door. I wasn’t expecting anybody. They asked if I was the nurse that did CPR. And I said, ‘yeah, that was me.’ They told me that he lived and I was just I was blown away,” Baird said.
“It was kind of a scary feeling – when you come to a couple of days later the hospital. How in the world did I get in here? What happened to me?” Connour said.
They both say that day created a bond that can never be broken.
“I feel like I owe him so much. But he says I don’t owe him nothing, that just me being alive more than makes him happy. But I told him we’d always be friends. The best friends in the world,” Connour said.
They hope their story inspires people to take CPR training, because you never know when you might need to use it.
“When you’re doing that compression, it’s essentially the heart pumping blood to the brain and to all the vital organs… Yeah, that’s the factor that absolutely saved his life,” Baird said.
After his heart attack, Connour said he doesn’t think he can continue working a strenuous construction job, especially in the heat. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do next. Baird created an online fundraiser to help his new friend cover medical bills. If you’d like to donate, you can visit the fundraiser page here.
The American Heart Association offers CPR and first aid training courses. If you’d like to lean more, you can visit their website.