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Gold Medallist Roger Lomas Still playing after cardiac arrest
Back in February 2015 Sheffield HC and England Masters player Roger Lomas suffered a cardiac arrest while playing hockey at Abbeydale. This memory came flooding back to him when watching Christian Eriksen collapse during the Denmark's Euro 2020 match against Finland on Saturday.
At age 69, Roger collapsed during a game of hockey. He suffered a cardiac arrest but if it wasn’t for his team mates, medics and a defibrillator from the local squash club Roger wouldn’t be with us today.
If this had happened whilst on a walk away from people he wouldn’t have survived
Teammates such as Andy Robinson and Marnie Grieg performed CPR until the defibrillator arrived. The defibrillator was used to shock Roger back to life. He was rushed to hospital where he eventually regained consciousness but with little to no memory of the event.
He didn’t recover consciousness until a couple of hours later in hospital and was very lucky to survive given the amount of time CPR had to be administered. It was a very cold day and it is though that allowed his body to shut down without further complications. Later Roger had an angiogram and a stent inserted in an artery and hasn’t ‘looked back since’. All the people who helped with medical procedures were fantastic particularly Andy Robinson and Marnie Grieg, although he knows nothing about it.
The following morning, he was on his mobile to colleagues about a North event he was supposed to organising that day.
Not being aware of what happened helped in the recovery
After 11 weeks of rehab, 3 of which included some golf, Roger picked up his stick and participated in a hockey tournament.
He is now in his fifty-eighth year playing at Abbeydale and developing his masters hockey career. Roger is an over 70s Regional Final Gold medalist, was vice captain of the England LX O70 who also won gold at the European Tournament in Antwerp 2019 and has been selected to play for the Tokyo World Cup, which due to Covid has been postponed until 2022.
Sheffield Hockey Club shared their story and inspired other clubs around the country to invest in a defibrillator and educate their members on where to find them as well as how to administer CPR.
Find out more about CPR here and more about defibrillators and where your local one is, click here.