CALGARY — Using her bra to stop the bleeding, a Calgary woman is being credited with helping save the life of a man beaten unconscious outside a southwest nightclub.
Nicky Arsenault, 19, was leaving the Back Alley Nightclub with friends early Sunday morning when they saw two men who had been left unconscious and bleeding heavily on the sidewalk.
A nursing assistant at Bowcrest Care Centre, Arsenault jumped into action along with friend Paul Fitzgerald, a welder in the Canadian military.
“There were 20 or 30 people standing around but nobody was doing anything,” she said.
“I saw he had a deep laceration on the left side of his head, but he was laying on the left side so the blood was pouring out.
“I got two people help me turn him to the recovery position, otherwise he would have bled out, then I took off my bra because nobody had anything else to use, and I held it against the laceration.”
While Arsenault helped one victim, Fitzgerald helped the other — a 24-year-old male who had a broken right arm.
While she was performing first aid, Arsenault said the man she was helping stopped breathing at one point.
“He was breathing through his nasal passage but it was so blocked, it was really shallow, almost like snoring then he stopped,” she said.
“So I opened his throat and cleared out as much blood as I could so I wouldn’t have to give him CPR.”
It was at that point, she said the man’s pulse dropped from 80 to 60 BPM.
“That’s pretty bad,” she said.
Their actions garnered kudos from EMS spokesman Stuart Brideaux.
“Certainly any time anyone sees an opportunity to try to help the well-being of a patient before EMS arrives, we’re very appreciative of them,” he said.
“It’s very noble for someone to stop to help when they can — in a patient’s mind … if someone is there helping, they are not alone and are being looked after.”
Arsenault said bystanders told her the unconscious pair had been flirting with the girlfriends of another group of men who took offence and laid a beating on them.
“They just turned around and started beating on them,” she said.
“Once the guys were on the ground, one of them got booted in the head and that’s what caused the lacerations, from the cement.
“Then the other guys just jumped in their car and left.”
