Timothy “T.J.” Henderson will remember May 2009 for more than just his high school graduation. He’ll also remember it as the month he saved his grandmother’s life. Thanks to CPR training he received in his secondary Health Occupations class at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College’s West Harrison County Center in Long Beach, he was able to resuscitate his grandmother, who collapsed and stopped breathing in their Pass Christian home May 18.
“While everyone else was losing it, I laid her on the floor and checked her breathing,” Henderson said. “When I determined that she was not breathing, I gave her two rescue breaths and checked her pulse. I then began the compressions. About the time she revived, the fire rescue had arrived. Shane Bass, a Pass Christian fireman, told me I did a great job.”
His grandmother, Dorothy Scarborough, 69, had been running a high fever when she collapsed. The hospital classified the collapse as a heart attack brought on by her illness. “She already has a pace maker and now she is scheduled to get a defibrillator. I am just glad she will be around for a while.”
Henderson has had several people encourage him to become an emergency medical technician. “What I really want to do is become a nurse,” he said. “I want to enter the Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) program at the Jefferson Davis Campus. The paramedic with AMR told me that I needed to become a paramedic when I get older. I told him that my heart belonged to nursing.” He will be attending Gulf Coast in the fall with a Career Technical scholarship and will begin taking the prerequisite courses for the ADN program. He will also represent the college as a member of the Reflections Team.
Henderson lives with two elderly great-aunts, his grandmother, an uncle, his mother, Tammy Henderson, and his brother, Charles, 15. “I guess the fact that I have always lived with my grandparents and needed to be aware of their medical needs is the reason I became interested in nursing. I love helping people and I enjoy the adrenaline and problem-solving experiences that medical personnel have every day in their jobs. I don’t think I would be very good at a job that is behind a desk.”
Marla Eason, Henderson’s Health Occupations instructor this past school year, said the entire class and everyone at the center were thrilled when they found out about Henderson’s heroic deed. “We are just so proud of him and that he was able to think so quickly about what needed to be done,” Eason said. “CPR is something you learn and practice, but you never know whether someone will use it or not until they are in an emergency situation. T.J. enjoys doing clinical at Memorial Hospital when the class goes there. He especially enjoys the emergency room. That he can think on his feet so quickly proves that he will make a wonderful ER nurse, if that’s what he decides to do.”
