ARLINGTON – The difference between life and death can be as thin as having a nurse 15 seconds away when your heart decides to quit in a Safeway parking lot.
Mike Cummins learned that lesson.
The 71-year-old Marysville man doesn’t remember when his heart gave out. He was behind the wheel of a car he was test driving from a nearby car dealership.
| Cascade Valley Hospital in Arlington offers basic first aid and CPR classes 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. the third Saturday of each month. Certification is good for two years. Cost ranges from $25 to $60, depending on the training required. For more information, call 360-435-2133. |
Melani Nasby, 36, an employee at Cascade Valley Hospital, had just pulled away from a gas station nearby when she noticed Cummins’ car parked at an odd angle after striking a vehicle. Somebody was leaning in the driver’s door helping Cummins.
It turned out to be Tom Clark, a nurse at the hospital who had coincidentally been buying gas in front of Nasby.
Clark’s mother had seen the slow-speed collision, and Clark found Cummins slumped over the steering wheel.
Clark could not find a pulse and immediately began cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Nasby rushed to help. With Cummins lying sideways in the seat, his feet out the driver’s door, Clark compressed his chest. Nasby ran around to the passenger’s door to help with mouth-to-mouth breathing.
After a couple of compressions and breaths, Cummins vomited.
“We got a slight, slight pulse,” Nasby remembers.
They pulled him out of the car and laid him on the pavement in the rain. A woman with a cell phone called 911 and relayed messages from paramedics who were rushing to the scene.
Paramedic Chris Smith and emergency medical technician Greg Koontz from the Arlington Fire Department arrived within minutes. They used a defibrillator on Cummins. Smith inserted a breathing tube into Cummins’ trachea and administered medications to relax him.
While they worked, Cummins’ cell phone kept ringing, but his rescuers were too busy to answer.
The defibrillator got his heart working again on the first shock – a rare blessing. With a stronger pulse established, they loaded Cummins into an ambulance and raced to the hospital less than five minutes after arriving.
That was March 16. Cummins spent three days in the hospital hooked to a breathing machine before regaining consciousness. The doctor warned his wife, Gail, that losing a pulse, even for a few minutes, could cause brain damage.
Cummins turned out fine.
Five weeks later, he and his family gathered with Arlington firefighters at the hospital to honor Nasby. Clark was unable to be there.
The family took advantage of their first chance to thank his rescuers and ask exactly what had happened. The medics told the family how difficult it is to save a heart attack victim. Usually, a person only has four or five minutes without oxygen before brain damage or death occurs.
“It’s a pretty rare occurrence to even have the chance to talk to someone after that,” Koontz said. Cummins beat the odds because of quick CPR, he added.
Nasby shared many tearful hugs with the family.
Gail Cummins said her husband is resilient. He survived open-heart surgery 18 years ago and a heart attack several years back.
“He still asks, ‘I’m a miracle, aren’t I?’ ” she said.
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
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