By Steven Beardsley
Naples Daily News (Florida)
NAPLES, Fla. — It was a warm summer evening like any other when Karin Feist nearly died — three times.
On Monday, she, her husband, Adam, and their 7-year-old son, Casey, walked into a Bonita Springs fire station to thank the paramedics and firefighters who ensured she didn't.
"She would have never had that chance if these gentlemen didn't see that she did," Adam Feist told a crowded room on Monday.
Karin Feist, 40, who lives in Bonita Springs, suffered cardiac arrest while doing chores at home on a July evening. Rescuers performed CPR and applied defibrillator paddles multiple times to keep her alive, as her heart stopped three times.
The fire district celebrated the rescue by presenting five emergency responders with its Phoenix Award, a recognition for dramatic cardiac arrest rescues. Feist's rescue marked the 20th time since 1999 that Bonita firefighters and area paramedics have returned a victim from legal death.
Recognized were Bonita fire Lt. Steve Bunn, firefighter Ernie Williams, Lee County EMS paramedic Adrien Rochon, county EMT Carlos Materano and communications operator Denise Griffin.
Bunn reflected on the award, his second in two years, the day after he received it.
"I think more than anything else, I'm grateful she's around so she can live her life," he said.
A veteran firefighter with 34 years of experience, Bunn is accustomed to cardiac arrest calls. Few, however, force rescuers to go to such lengths.
Feist didn't have a history of heart troubles. She had just retrieved a vacuum from a closet on the evening of July 13 when she suddenly collapsed in front of her young son.
When Bunn and the others arrived at the Feist home, Adam was performing CPR on his wife, per instructions by dispatcher Griffin.
Rescuers started an IV, administered drugs and opened her airways with a tube. They put a cardiac monitor on her chest.
"For all intensive purposes, she was dead," Bunn said. "She was not breathing and her heart was not beating."
They began with the defibrillator.
Two shocks, then CPR. Two more shocks, then CPR. Three more shocks, and they put her in an ambulance, Adam Feist recalled.
"Next thing you know, we're at the hospital, and I figured she's dead," he said. "But she wasn't."
Karin Feist came back, although the recovery was gradual. For a few weeks, she was confused about what happened and where she was.
She doesn't remember any of the details, only what her husband and son tell her.
"It just amazes me," she said. "And I'm just so thankful for what everyone did."
For Bunn, whose father died of cardiac arrest, giving Feist her life back is reward enough.
"As you can imagine, we see a hell of a lot of tragedy," he said.
Not this time.
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