I made good on my promise to learn CPR — have you?

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

June Eastman, a Chicago Fire Department paramedic, had just finished running me through one of the CPR training courses she teaches on the side when I thought of another question to ask.

How often in her work, I wondered, is she called to an emergency scene where a family member or other bystander is already administering CPR to the victim when she arrives?

Eastman got this faraway look in here eyes, as if searching the reaches of her memory from 27 years on the job, while she slowly shook her head from side to side.

Almost never, she finally conceded.

Usually, the bystanders are doing just that, she said, standing there. Or in the alternative, they’re screaming or yelling, or worse yet, lying on top of the body.

But as far as anybody performing the oh-so-simple, yet effective life-saving technique of chest compressions interspersed with mouth-to-mouth breathing assistance?

Well, she finally recalled, there was a time or two last summer when she came upon lifeguards performing CPR on child drowning victims. Other than that, she could only shrug.

That ought to be pretty sobering news to any of you who assume that in these times that if you keel over there will be somebody there who knows CPR to save you; or conversely, if it happens to another person in your presence that you can count on somebody else stepping up to take care of it.

The American Heart Association trains 12 million people a year in CPR through individuals such as Eastman, but they would be the first to tell you that’s not enough. As Eastman’s experience would attest, there are still too few of us who know what to do in that crucial first 10 minutes after someone collapses, when effective CPR can double or triple a cardiac arrest victim’s chances of survival.

Five years ago, I was one of the do-nothing bystanders when a man slumped to the floor in front of me in a Loop restaurant. I wrote a column about the experience, a little too cavalierly for some readers’ taste, and as part of my mea culpa, promised to take a CPR course.

With a gentle reminder from Eastman, I belatedly made good on that promise with a Thursday night visit to Chicago’s Pulse, the CPR training center she operates from a storefront at 3211 W. 111th in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood.

There were maybe 15 of us in all, most of them nurses updating their certifications, along with a young woman preparing herself for a new baby-sitting job.

I’m not saying I’m now qualified to save the world after practicing three hours on my blue plastic “manikin,” but if you happen to go into sudden cardiac arrest in my presence this week, I’d say you have a better chance of surviving until the pros arrive than you did at this time last week, and that’s pretty much the whole point of teaching CPR to the public.

Eastman, 45, has been teaching CPR since she got her paramedic license in 1984. She worked out of her house before opening the 111th Street location in 2007. The Mount Greenwood native started at the Fire Department in 1988 and exudes that I’ve-seen-it-all aura common to those in her line of work.

But her voice catches a little when she talks about an incident several years back when she answered a call from a home where an infant had toppled head first into a toilet and drowned while the mother was otherwise occupied. By the time the paramedics arrived, it was too late. Eastman couldn’t help but think it might have turned out different if the mother had known some CPR.

Since then, Eastman has offered a free infant CPR class for parents along with her normal lineup of paid courses.

CPR has changed through the years with the techniques updated at five-year intervals to reflect the latest research on what is most effective, and Eastman said she thinks the newest system is better.

After years of teaching the A-B-C method that emphasized opening a victim’s airway and breathing into their mouth before starting chest compressions, the heart association now recommends what it calls the C-A-B approach that involves immediately starting chest compressions to keep blood circulating through the body, then attending to the breathing.

“A lot of people believe they took the breathing out. They didn’t take the breathing out,” Eastman said. “But if you’ve never had a class, just do the compressions. Push hard and fast until 911 gets there.”

I hope I never need to put my CPR training to use, nor would I wish that on you. But as I get older, I find myself hoping that more of you know what to do.