Can a child suffer a heart attack at school?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes. So, is your school ready if it happens there and if it happens to your child?

For a school nurse like Kay Nauman, there is no such thing as a normal day.

Sept. 4 was not a normal day.

“I still get chill bumps every time I think about it,” she said.

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The school nurse has to use this AED three times to revive Jim Settles.

It happens when she thinks about Jim Settles, the 11-year-old who collapsed in the Doerre gym and didn’t wake up. He couldn’t — his heart had stopped.

“And I’m going, ‘why are you all so upset? He probably just fainted,’” Settles’ mother said.

What even Jim’s mom didn’t know was that he’d had a heart condition his entire life. And now, surrounded by teachers, coaches and Nauman performing CPS, her son was gone.

Until: “But that day we shocked him three times,” Nauman said.

Three times with an AED: an automated external defibrillator. At Doerre, they have two: one near the cafeteria, the other on the gymnasium wall.

“When you stop and it’s quiet and you think about, not what happened, but what you almost lost. it pretty much takes your breath away,” Settles’ mom said.

"And I woke up I felt like 20 seconds later in the hospital,” Jim said.

He actually woke up several days later, but Jim Settles was alive. His heart condition was one that doctors would be able to control.

But he wouldn’t be here at all without Nauman and that AED.

The governor signed a new law earlier this year that said every school in Texas should have these devices by now. Check to make sure they are at your school.

“And hopefully that every child has a problem at a school or anywhere or an adult, if somebody around knows how to use this simple little machine, hopefully somebody else will have that chance too,” Settles’ mother said.

Because Jim is the poster child for second chances.

“Just thank you,” Jim said. “Thank you for saving my life and being there with me and being strong through it.”

And one day after Jim’s heart attack, and his rescue, Governor Rick Perry was visiting schools in Houston, Austin, and San Antonio to ceremonially sign Senate Bill 7. 

“It makes you appreciate every second of every part of our lives when you almost lose so much of it,” his mom said.

Almost lost, but not on that September day.

According to a report by the House Research Organization, 15 Texas students have died from sudden cardiac arrest in the last 10 years.