This was the foot of my son hours after his birth; medical complications led to several tense hours as we waited to hear if he would live.

There had been no indications throughout the pregnancy that anything was wrong; it wasn't until the final moments of delivery that the effects of the true knot in his umbilical cord began to unfold.

It's incredible how quickly your entire life can change - most often when you least expect it.

It could be a car crash, a slip on the ice, an undiagnosed condition. It could be a heart attack or a blood clot - a seizure or a stroke. Life-altering medical issues are never planned and never hit us when we're ready for them. I didn't fully appreciate the fragility of the Human life until May of 2009 when something as simple as a tiny knot in a cord caused severe cerebral bleeding in my youngest son.

While we're still waiting to find out what the long term affects will be, there are a few certainties regarding the future that we must confront. Our son will have a significantly higher risk of seizures starting from tomorrow until the day he goes to meet his maker. These tiny short circuits in his brain have caused us to completely reevaluate our emergency preparedness and ushered in a whole new level of parent paranoia.

The more I've learned, the more I've come to realize how woefully under-prepared we are to face emergencies in our most populated places. Our schools, our offices, our rec centers, our grocery stores, our shopping malls, our churches and our highways. The only public place I know of where I can respond to a cardiac arrest is an airport or a hospital. neither I nor my children spend much time in either.

We're really only about one thing - making the necessary medical supplies, equipment and training available and affordable for YOU to respond - for US to respond, whoever we are, where ever we are.

Can you really afford not to be ready to respond?

David Coles
President