Paul Clifton remembers it vividly, even now, months later.
He was at the Cardiac Rehab gym at St. Tammany Health System’s Paul D. Cordes Outpatient Pavilion, working out as part of his recuperation from a recent surgery. He had already put in 40 minutes on a treadmill and just sat down for a turn at a hand bike.
That’s when he got a strange feeling, “like my batteries were draining.”
“I just felt a strange sensation,” he said. “I knew something was happening, because I uttered the words ‘Oh, no’ to the attendant that was there … and that was it. It was lights out.”
*****
The first thing Courtney Jee remembers was the thud.
A registered nurse with St. Tammany Health System, she had coincidentally been checking the supplies in a crash cart kept in the gym at the time. She turned when she heard the noise and saw Clifton on the floor.
“I wasn’t sure why he was there,” she said, “so I ran over.”
Like all patients in the STHS Cardiac Rehab gym, he had been wearing a heart monitor during his workout. The tech at the monitoring station – which shows the readouts from all the patients working out – told Jee that Clifton’s heart had entered “a lethal rhythm.”
“At that point, I knew why he was on the ground and what I had to do,” she said.
She called his name. She shook him. Nothing. “So,” she said, “I started chest compressions.”
Time slowed. She continued as her colleagues ushered the other patients out of the room. Another watched Clifton’s vitals. Yet another called 911.
Jee guesses it took maybe a minute or so, but it felt like an eternity.
“It was a moment where – I wasn’t alone; there were people everywhere – but there was a moment where I felt like it was just Paul and I,” she said. “And I couldn’t let him go.”
And then he opened his eyes.
“Where am I?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
Just then, Jee could hear the sirens of an approaching ambulance. In short order, he was heading to the hospital. He has since made a full recovery.
*****
As it turns out, Clifton’s heart event wasn’t brought on by exercise. Rather, it was an inevitable glitch, doctors told him. If it wouldn’t have happened while he was at the Cardiac Rehab gym and surrounded by healthcare professionals like Jee, it would have happened elsewhere – and who knows what would have happened then.
That being the case, he has a message for patients who might blanche at the prospect of weeks of cardiac rehab:
“Stick to it as best as you can and follow it through to fruition,” he said. “I had many times wanted to give it up. If I had done that, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”
Standing next to him, Jee added: “We both had angels here that day. Thank God they were here.”