Woman Survives, Thanks Hatzalah

Jessica Rapana – Wentworth Courier

Until they helped save her life, Liza Stearn did not know much about Hatzolah.

But last year when she went into cardiac arrest out of the blue, she experienced first-hand how important the service really was.
Ms Stearn, 42, of Rose Bay, was being attended to by the NSW Ambulance for chest pains, when she suddenly went into cardiac arrest, prompting Hatzolah and further paramedics to be dispatched.

“They were there within minutes of receiving the call,” she said.
“They performed CPR for 32 minutes, I had no pulse and no heartbeat for that amount of time.”

Hatzolah Sydney founder and president Mendy Litzman said they were able to assist paramedics.

“We were able to back up the paramedics and take over the compression part of the CPR. We all worked as a team.”

Ms Stearn was lucky she had gone into cardiac arrest in front of paramedics, he said: “It was obviously a big game changer in saving her life.”
Ms Stearn had suffered a very rare Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) heart attack.

Although she had a preexisting condition, she was unaware of it at the time and had returned from a holiday in Bali only 12 hours before.

Ms Stearn said she now suffered short-term memory loss and had some fitness problems, but considered herself lucky to be alive.

Ms Stearn said she wanted to raise awareness of the Hatzolah service.
Many people, including herself before the incident, did not know about Hatzolah and assumed it was a Jewish Ambulance response, she said.

“I had no idea they were actually responding to calls from the NSW Ambulance.” Hatzolah began in 2006 as a medical response service, based in the east, to cater to the Jewish community. It began working with paramedics during medical emergencies in May, 2014. Mr Litzman encouraged people to call 000 – first: “We are not r instead of triple-0, we are working with them.”