A forty-nine year old pharmacist from Old St Mellons is crowdfunding a defibrillator for his community.<\/p>\n
Phil Bullen (pictured) decided to raise money to buy the device, which gives a high energy electric charge to the heart,\u00a0after suffering a cardiac arrest last year.<\/p>\n
Mr Bullen has so far raised around \u00a3400 of the \u00a31500 needed to install the automated electronic defibrillator and provide training on how to use it.<\/p>\n
He says \u00a31,500 is a small price to pay to save lives.<\/p>\n
Mr Bullen had his heart attack just two days after he was away snowboarding. He’s always prided himself on his fitness and goes to the gym three times a week.<\/p>\n
“One morning I woke up with an achy pain in my chest… I was feeling really sweaty and clammy and then I had the pain in my left arm… So I rang 999 straight away and said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack, you better come and get me.’ I didn’t still quite believe it… It came completely out of the blue.”<\/p>\n
The experience has made him\u00a0more aware of heart attacks.<\/p>\n
“I always thought, as many people do, that it’s a disease of age… But the more and more you read about it, the more younger people are having these conditions.”<\/p>\n
Mr Bullen was lucky\u00a0he did not arrest until he was in the ambulance.<\/p>\n
According to the charity Welsh Hearts, which helps raise money to put defibrillators in public places, the survival rate after a sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital is just 3%. Where a defibrillator is used, the survival rate is 47%.<\/p>\n
Mr Bullen says the crowdfunding campaign is going well so far with a number of local businesses contributing large amounts.<\/p>\n
“I’m hoping, because it’s taken off so well, that we’ll actually be able to raise funds for more than one.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A forty-nine year old pharmacist from Old St Mellons is crowdfunding a defibrillator for his community. Phil Bullen (pictured) decided to raise money to buy the device, which gives a high energy electric charge to the heart,\u00a0after suffering a cardiac arrest last year. Mr Bullen has so far raised around \u00a3400 of the \u00a31500 needed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[743,744],"tags":[26,135,355,918,183,596],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14159"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14259,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159\/revisions\/14259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}