Patients Talk

Excerpt from Matt's Book,
One Beat at a Time

As Mary Jane and Mom sat on the deck down by the diving board at the deep end of the pool, Mary Jane's daughter, [my sister] Stacy, and I were all racing… We were already getting tired after spending hours in the pool, but I sucked it up and gave it everything I had…

As I got to the end of the pool where Mom was, my heart was racing as expected. It was going a little too fast, though, and I just didn't feel right. I looked up and said, "Mom, I feel funny" in a worried tone. She must have seen the look in my eyes because she immediately jumped up to grab onto my arms as I went completely limp. She pulled me out of the water, and as I flopped onto the deck, time slowed and panic set in. Mom screamed, and Mary Jane lost it. Dad was in the house when he heard the commotion and came running out to meet Mom as she knelt over my lifeless, blue body.

Mom had sent Mary Jane off to call the rescue squad, who were headquartered in the fire station just about a mile down the road. When Mary Jane got to the phone, she was in such a panic that she couldn't get it to work. She had dialed the numbers so quickly that not one of them registered, and she was left with a rapid busy signal. She dropped the receiver and ran out into the street in a total panic.

Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were "working" on me. They were doing the CPR that they had learned seven years prior. What part of the CPR technique that time hadn't erased, panic did. They ended up doing very little, besides praying.

As Mary Jane got a few steps out of the door and was heading into the street, she saw a woman. This woman had heard the screaming and was trying to find a way into the backyard… Mary Jane couldn't really talk, so she just took her through the door to the backyard.

As Mom and Dad looked up, they saw this woman coming at them. She was toting a little medical bag, the kind that old-time doctors used to carry. It was almost as if for a half a second they forgot about me as they tried to process: Who is this woman, and how did she get here? "Don't worry," she told them, as they snapped back into reality, "I am an emergency medical…" something or other. Not surprisingly, Mom and Dad didn't get the details. She proceeded to open up her little bag and get something to clean out my airway. She then rolled me flat and started CPR.

Someone eventually got a hold of the emergency crews; we still don't know who called them, but there were more than enough people around by now…

As everyone milled about in disbelief, chattering about what had happened, the emergency medical "something or other" headed back to her car. All we know about her is that she was driving through town that day when her car overheated. We also know that she pulled to the side of the road, just about ten paces from our house. As she sat there, back in the days before cell phones, she probably wondered what she was going to do. She must have stepped out of her car to either look under the hood or approach a friendly looking house to ask to use the phone.

Right about then, she heard the screams of terror coming from my mom and Mary Jane. As the woman was trying to find her way back to the pool, Mary Jane appeared and escorted her to the backyard. The woman came back, revived me, and then in the commotion of the ambulance arrival made her way back to her car. She got in and drove off. Apparently her car started up just fine.

A lot of people ask me whether I think she was an angel, just appearing and disappearing like she did… All I can say is that only once in our… lives has one of us walked out the front door to find an overheated car, let alone one with an emergency medical something or other in it. It just happened to be at the exact time I was having a cardiac arrest.

Patients Talk

Excerpt from Matt's Book,One Beat at a Time

Excerpt from Matt's Book,
One Beat at a Time