Skip to content

'My boss saved my life that day'

Philippa GoymerNorth East and Cumbria
News imageBBC Karen Pyle, left, and Jessica Beni, right, are sitting down in a classroom. Karen is blonde and is wearing a navy polo neck top with Newcastle College emblem on the right hand side. Jessica has long dark hair and is wearing black dress with a white floral pattern on it. Behind them are grey double doors with chrome handles and narrow glass windows, there is a table with stationery and scissors on and some posters on the wall. BBC
Karen went into cardiac during a meeting with a student and Jess, her boss, performed CPR until paramedics arrived

When health lecturer Karen Pyle had what she thought was indigestion she dismissed her symptoms as being down to "something she ate".

But Pyle's "indigestion" was actually a heart attack and it was at that point a 999 emergency call should have been made, says Paul Brolly from the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS).

A few weeks later she went into cardiac arrest at work.

It is thanks to Pyle's boss that she is still alive and now standing with Brolly in a classroom at Newcastle College while students in a nearby room learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Pyle remembers it being an "ordinary day at work" in March when she was asked by a student if they could have a meeting with her and her boss, Jessica Beni, assistant head of curriculum at the college.

"I remember walking in to the office - and that's the last thing I remember," she says. "The next thing I know I'm waking up in the Freeman Hospital."

News imageKaren Pyle is sitting at a classroom desk with the background slightly out of focus. Behind her there are desks and chairs and a plastic water bottle on the table to her right. She has blonde hair, tied back and with a fringe. She has a pair of glasses perched on her head and she is wearing a dark blue polo shirt with the white edge of a the Newcastle College bridge logo just showing.
Karen Pyle says it had started as an "ordinary day at work"

Beni says she noticed Pyle's head had tilted to one side.

"I thought she'd maybe had a stroke at first so I asked the student to leave the room, I didn't want them to see anything like that, and I laid Karen on the floor," she says.

"I put her in the recovery position at first but then I noticed her skin had changed colour.

"Then it was like the skin colour all over her body had changed colour and I realised what was happening and knew I had to start doing compressions."

Beni had recently updated her CPR training.

"I was crying and I remember feeling her ribs cracking under my hands," she says.

Beni says another colleague rang 999 and kept telling her to "keep going, keep going".

News imageJessica Beni is sitting at a desk in a classroom. She has long dark hair and is wearing a black dress with white floral pattern. There are classroom desks in the picture behind her and practice dummies on the table. There's a board in the background with pale blue paper and a blue border with health education related images and posters stuck on it which aren't clear from a distance. There is an anatomical model on the windowsill behind Jessica's right shoulder. Grey blinds are shut with sunlight peeking through the gaps and some classroom bunting is hung across the windows.
Jessica Beni performed CPR on Karen Pyle who had gone into cardiac arrest

Paramedics arrived and Pyle was taken to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, a world-renowned cardiothoracic centre.

After two and a half months she returned to work.

"It was emotional, to come back and see Jess," she says. "I cannot thank her enough for what she did.

"My boss saved my life that day."

News imageThree teenage girls are standing. The first going left to right has long blonde hair and is wearing a cobalt blue jumper. In the middle she also has long blonde hair and a navy jacket, on the right is Charlotte and she is wearing an oatmeal knitted round neck jumper and has long dark hair. All three are wearing their college lanyards which have red straps. They're standing in a room in the college and behind them is a kitten with pale grey metro tiles and white cabinets.
Lilli, Jess and Charlotte have been learning how to perform CPR

Beni is grateful for her CPR training and is keen to stress how important it is for young people to learn the skill. She and Pyle are sharing their story as NEAS staff teach it to more than 200 of the college's 16-19-year-old students.

Charlotte, who has just completed the session, says: "It is such an important skill, it could save a life.

"It was really hard. I couldn't get the mannequin to click - the sound it makes so you know you have pushed down hard enough - then someone from the ambulance service came over and showed me and I could do it in a minute.

"She was great."

NEAS community resuscitation development officer Paul Brolly, who is leading the sessions, says a cardiac arrest is a life-threatening medical emergency where the heart stops pumping blood through the body.

When it happens, "every second counts", he says.

"Knowing what to do in those first few minutes can make the difference between life and death."

Follow BBC Newcastle on X,Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram and listen to Radio Newcastle on BBC Sounds.

Related stories
Related internet links