Woman, 81, uses CPR to revive husband after heart attack

HOUSTON -- Alberta Greer is not in good health.

The retired 81-year-old nurse has a pacemaker, is on dialysis and she's had two heart attacks.

"That's enough about that," she'll tell you.

Now add life-saver and family hero to the list. Wednesday, she saved the life of her 85-year-old husband by performing chest compression for five minutes until paramedics arrived.

Robert Greer was about to go to the doctor two days ago when he collapsed in the doorway of their southeast Houston home. His wife tried to block his fall, then yelled for her son to help.

The two moved the 6-foot-tall husband and father to a chair, where they soon realized he was having a heart attack.

"I didn't want to tell her that he had stopped breathing," says Ernest Greer.

Alberta Greer pleaded with her husband of 62 years not to leave. Then she went into action.

Normally weak from dialysis, she and her son moved Robert to the floor. Then she straddled his body and began chest compression in timed intervals, with a 911 operator on speakerphone. Before paramedics arrived, her husband was breathing again.

Her children say she saved his life, and Alberta agrees.

"Just because you're old," she says, "don't mean you can't straddle that person and give him chest compressions because you can."

Robert Greer is now in the DeBakey VA Hospital. His family will meet with doctors next week to discuss his condition. He was already being treated for congestive heart disease.

He has no memory of what his wife did, but his family has already told him he's alive because of her intervention, and her refusal to give up.

It's a reminder to all of us that we should know CPR, regardless of age or medical condition. The life that's saved might be that of the one you love.