Quick action, CPR knowledge save local pastor

Rev. Jeffery Rosser was preaching hard in the pulpit of St. Paul Baptist Church Dec. 12. He was almost through, turned and just fell. He didn’t remember anything until he woke up in East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika.

“I felt like I always felt. I didn’t know anything till I woke up and the doctor was telling me they needed to put a device in. They did that on Wednesday,” he said.

Nina Taylor, a retired nurse who is credited, along with others, with saving him with her CPR skills, almost did not go to church that morning. Now she is so glad she did. She had surgery two weeks prior to that with stents put in both legs. She had decided that, depending on how she felt, she might not go.

Her work and the work of another church member, Lisa Smith, helped save Rosser, who had gone into cardiac arrest while preaching that Sunday.

Taylor said she noticed when he got up to preach he mentioned how hot it was while everybody else was fine. When he was almost finished he turned around, paused for a minute, put his hands on the pulpit, then turned around and fell backwards on his back.

People gathered around him and she went up to the stage. When she saw him he was pale and clammy. He wasn’t responding when his name was called, and she knew it was more than passing out from being too hot. She knew by looking at him they had to do something and do it in a hurry, she said. At one point she thought he was already gone.

She told members to call 911, which Lisa Smith did. Taylor checked his pulse but he still wasn’t responding. She began doing compressions while Lisa talked to the operator, telling what was going on. His pulse was getting weaker until he did not have one. The operator said to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Taylor told Smith how to do the compressions while she did the breathing resuscitation.

Taylor never thought she would have to do the CPR or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after she retired from Randolph County Hospital in 1992. She couldn’t get Ross’s pulse and they continued to work. She had always been taught to continue CPR until you were exhausted or until help came. She believes they saved his life.

The police came, then Emergency Medical Transport’s Matthew Knight and Roger McVey. They put him on a monitor that picked up his pulse and they started oxygen. Rosser’s wife, Janice, watched with concern. He was rushed to Randolph Medical Center, where the emergency medical helicopter picked him up to ferry him to EAMC.

McVey said: “Everyone worked together as a team. The people present prior to our arrival played the most important part in performing CPR to keep a heartbeat and blood flowing. Everything went step by step as we are taught.”

In the EAMC emergency room someone said whoever did the CPR saved his life and he needed to hug their neck.

“When we got there Sunday afternoon I was real thankful to see him and thankful God showed us what to do,” Taylor said. Ironically, Lisa works at Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, but not in the medical part. She works in accounting.

Doctors at EAMC put an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator, an ICD, into Rosser’s chest. He was in EAMC until Dec. 17.

Rosser said he has thanked Nina and Lisa so many times. He thanks the ambulance service, the Roanoke police, the hospital and everyone involved.

They helped Rosser, 56, see his 57th birthday in May, he said. “I thanked the Lord. It could have been over with. The Lord blessed me,” he said.

“I was so glad I went that day. I was blessed to help somebody,” Taylor said. “The reverend tells people he is living on a prayer. He says he is so thankful the Lord was working through us,” she said.

“I would encourage everybody to be trained in CPR,” she said.

Rosser is missing preaching a great deal. Different ministers are coming in and preaching. The doctor did not want him to preach; however, his doctor gave him permission to do a funeral that he really wanted to do but the device in his chest went off and shocked him about five times during the service. Once again he took an ambulance ride to RMC and then to Opelika where they reset the ICD and he spent several more days. They gave him some medicine to take and hopefully it will help, he said.

He has had heart trouble since 1997 and has a weak heart muscle that has caused a lot of problems.

“I think everybody needs to have somebody in their church who knows CPR and has a defibrillator available,” he said.

The Red Cross and Emergency Medical Transport offer CPR training.