Graedy Renkema reunited with Mike Leroy, the firefighter who saved his life, during a celebration honoring both of them.<\/p>\n
SAN ANTONIO \u2014 When 16-year-old Graedy Renkema collapsed during hockey practice in August, an off-duty San Antonio firefighter jumped into action.<\/p>\n
Graedy then underwent open-heart surgery a week later.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Rampage Hockey honored the assistant coach, dad, and volunteer firefighter who saved Graedy’s life.<\/p>\n
“Thank you for saving me, ‘Big Mike,'” Graedy said to Mike Leroy as they reunited in front of their team.<\/p>\n
On Aug. 12th, Leroy jumped into action when his son ran inside from practice to warn him that Graedy had collapsed. A trained firefighter for over 20 years, Leroy knew what he had to do.<\/p>\n
He immediately started performing CPR on the six-foot-four teen who lay on the ground.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t feel a heartbeat,” Leroy told KENS 5.<\/p>\n
A little over 20 minutes would pass, and EMS showed up. Graedy’s parents witnessed it all.<\/p>\n
“It felt like eternity for me,” Graedy’s mom, Meg, said.<\/p>\n
Meg knew this was a matter of life and death, and even if her son lived, he would have extensive brain damage.<\/p>\n
The amount of time his brain went without oxygen was deadly.<\/p>\n
Graedy was taken to the hospital. They had a choice to make as a family: Risk his life performing open heart surgery to save him or find out what happens if they don’t.<\/p>\n
What happened to Graedy was unprecedented for him and his parents. They had no idea there was something wrong with his heart.<\/p>\n
There were no signs, symptoms, or tests that showed he had a bad heart. But doctors determined the anatomy of his heart was not formed properly at birth.<\/p>\n
Meg and her husband Ben, decided to put their teen through open heart surgery. Their risk would come with a great reward – Graedy woke up.<\/p>\n
“All I remember is waking up in a bed and playing video games,” Graedy said.<\/p>\n
Without Leroy, Graedy could have died waiting for EMS. Without Leroy, Graedy would never have had the chance to play hockey again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so thankful other people were there to help with his resuscitation because in that moment, I was mom,” Meg said.<\/p>\n
The man who helped save Graedy’s life was honored Monday for something he sees as his duty, but for everyone else, it was a miracle.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet healthy, get back on the ice, we need him,” Leroy said.<\/p>\n
Pressing the importance of heart health – specifically with young athletes, Leroy gifted the team a chance to each receive free heart screenings through a program called August Heart if they choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Graedy Renkema reunited with Mike Leroy, the firefighter who saved his life, during a celebration honoring both of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":230573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,7202,7203,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-230572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-san-antonio","10":"tag-sanantonio","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115212312068595284","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}