The CPR and Safety Lady on Around H-Town
Hello everyone,
I recently had the pleasure of joining Maureen Cooper on the 'Around H-Town' podcast over at KRBE, and what a wonderful conversation we had! We dove into the importance of learning CPR and explored how these life-saving skills are crucial for everyone.
For those of you who’d like to listen to our chat, we've got you covered! We’ve posted the full 10-minute interview here, and we've also included a transcript for those who prefer to read along.
Whether you're here to learn, refresh your skills, or simply curious about the world of CPR and safety, I'm excited for you to join us on this life-saving journey. So grab a cup of tea, get comfortable, and let's get into it!
Stay safe and empowered,
Gail Gould
The CPR and Safety Lady
For a deeper dive into her inspiring journey and expert advice, check out the full transcript below.
Maureen Cooper: Welcome to the show! Back to around each town on KRP! Good morning and thank you for joining us here on KRBE. You're listening to around H. Town every Sunday morning. I'm your host, Maureen Cooper. And right now, a first-time guest on the show we are excited to welcome the CPR and Safety Lady, Gale Gould, welcome to the show.
CPR and Safety Lady: Thank you so much, Maureen. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to hear.
Maureen Cooper: We know that last month October was national sudden cardiac arrest awareness month, but obviously this is something that is a very important topic year-round for everyone's safety. So maybe first tell us how you came to be the CPR and safety lady.
CPR and Safety Lady: Oh my, well let me see where I can start here, Maurice. I was a group exercise instructor forever forever and ever here at Houston taught all over the place and I got tired of being an elite hard. So I decided that I wanted to go back to graduate school and do corporate health promotion. So I went to University of Houston and got a graduate degree in exercise science health promotion and I was so excited because that corporate health promotion was really my goal. So when I graduated with my degree, I would call companies and I would ask them, would you like a tobacco cessation program? Would you be interested in a weight management program? Would you be interested in a stress management program? They all would sort of hit him and hop. But then I would say, are you interested in a CPR AED first aid training program? And they all were interested. Now this is back like in 1989. I mean, you could still call people and get them on the phone.
Maureen Cooper: Oh, yeah.
CPR and Safety Lady: You could call people and speak to them, actually. You know, I started working with a lot of Fortune 500 companies here in Houston. I was so excited, so fortunate to do that. And so that's kind of how I got started. It's very rewarding. It's gratifying. I received emails and phone calls and people saying things like, oh my God, that thing you showed me had to do. To use it on my child or my husband or my coworker, my neighbor. I received a phone call about two months ago, Maureen, and this person looked at my name, my Instagram handle, and called my business line, and I picked up the phone, and he was just randomly, he was like, oh my god, I almost died, I almost died, I almost died. I was a long-horn steak house, and I almost died. He goes, I was choking on a piece of steak. I didn't know what to do. I was running into the bathroom and as I was going to the bathroom with this piece of steak and my throat. Some woman ran up to me. She said, I can see you're choking and I'm going to help you. And he said, she gave him a couple of abdominal thrusts and saved his life and he was like, where did you learn this? And she told him the CPR and Safety Lady. So he called me. I mean, he was hysterical. He was like, I just knew I was going to die. I could not get the guy off the phone. He was just rambling on on and so you know I get videos. Oh my god think I do showed me how to do this so it's very rewarding and you know it's so important that people know how to do this more in so so important I received a video about a year ago from a new mom who took my class about a month or a baby was born and it was Sunday morning and I was like who's sending me a video in Sunday morning She was crying in the video. She was like, thank God, I took the class before my baby was more. My one year old was choking on a piece of nectarine. My husband had no idea what to do, and I saved my baby's life because he showed me what to do. So, you know, it's rewarding to get those emails and videos and phone calls. No, I'm what I'm doing. I'm actually helping people.
Maureen Cooper: Well, obviously taking the class sounds like a big part of what everyone should do, because odds are, at some point in our lifetime, we're going to find ourselves in an emergency situation where someone needs either to be saved from choking or needs CPR, possibly at the relation. Those people that are listening and just say, you know, what's the most important thing I need to learn? Like, what's the most important thing? I mean, we know to call 911, but is there is there one piece of advice that you can give people to to help in these situations or is it as a bigger?
CPR and Safety Lady: Yes! Yes, and that is learn how to do hands only CPR, which is CPR with no breathing and learn what to do God forbid if someone starts choking. You know, more in or in 350,000 people will die this year in the United States from certain cardiac arrest. It's one of the leading causes of death, and American Heart Association estimates between 100,000 and 200,000 lives each year could be saved if more people stepped up to the plate to provide CPR. So to learn hands on the CPR, it doesn't take a lot of effort. You can do it online, you can take a class with someone like me, so you know, I've had to relatives in the past two months, who both had spouses, who had a sudden cardiac arrest, neither one of them knew what to do and then, unfortunately, they're both died. So, you know, people just need to be able to step up to the plate, it doesn't take long. Only around 4,000 people die each year from choking. And people are like, well, that's not that many, but when you consider the 3,000 of the 4,000 I can joke in her children, so all parents, all parents, all caregivers, all teachers, grandparents, all need to know what to do God forbid their child starts choking. I've met people who've lost their children to choking, and it's tragic, no parent should ever have to lose a child with choking. So I personally think it should be required that all parents take a CPR class before baby comes home from the hospital, but I'm currently not in charge, that's not a requirement.
Maureen Cooper: Well we wish you were because you're right. So basically hands only CPR and choking are the big things that people need to get trained in. It's easy to do it online. If you are a manager at a company or your own company you can provide this for your employees as a class, as you know resource. My next question is what if you did some kind of training like this 10, 15, 20 years ago, what has the everything changed as far as...
CPR and Safety Lady: Yes, he basically never choice more and you can either do compression plus ventilation, or if you don't know the person very well, you don't know them at all that bleeding, they're vomiting, copious meds, fluids kind of the mouth, they can use what we call hands only, which is CPR with no breathing. But most Americans, I'd say less than 50% Americans admit to know in CPR. CPR has changed in the past 15, 20 years. It hasn't changed much in the last 15 years. But back to your original question, there's a reason why doctors, nurses, paramedics, daycare providers must take CPR every two years and that is because you forget it.
Maureen Cooper: Yeah.
CPR and Safety Lady: It's so easy to forget. It's so easy. And what's choosing people think, well, my child's teacher knows CPR, probably not, probably not. The only ones who are required by law to have it here in Texas are day care providers. If your child is in day care, like a little preschool, those people must have a by law. Once your kid gets to kindergarten and higher, it's really up to the school. And the way the law reads in the state of Texas, only one person in the entire school needs to know CPR, that usually you nurse at a PE coach.
Maureen Cooper: Wow. That's a lot of kids for only one person in the building.
CPR and Safety Lady: It is now with all this stuff that's been going on lately, the past a couple years of all this active violence. Some school districts have been training their teachers, at least keeping teachers the option to learn it. But it's not, it's not required.
Maureen Cooper: And we are almost out of time gale. So I want to make sure we're talking about how important this stuff is and what everyone needs to learn, tell us how we can get more information on your classes and how people can learn this. Where do they keep going?
CPR and Safety Lady: Well, you can reach out to me via my website, which is www cpr and safetylated.com. You can reach out to me on Instagram. My Instagram handle is CPR and safety lady. Actually, and safety lady. Actually, Instagram is just CPR and safety lady.
Maureen Cooper: Okay, great. And that's spelling out the word AND. Yes. I know that's A and D. People do that symbol, but we're going to do CPR, A and D, safety lady, dot com.
CPR and Safety Lady: Yes.
Maureen Cooper: Okay. Great. Thank you so much for being here, Gale. Thank you for the work that you do and all the lives that I know you have saved and for teaching the rest of us out of save lives as well.
CPR and Safety Lady: Thank you so much. You're having and it was really fun talking to you.
