By Cathy Dyson
The Free Lance-Star
FREDRICKSBURG, Va. — Pete Sullivan was talking one moment — and dead the next.
He had a cardiac arrest, in which his heart malfunctioned and stopped beating. The same thing kills almost 360,000 Americans a year.
Lucky for Sullivan, the person next to him was an experienced fire and rescue volunteer who has taught CPR classes.
The man also happened to be his firstborn son.
Once Billy Sullivan got over the shock of his father’s lifeless body, his training kicked in.
He started CPR while a co-worker called 911.
What followed was a chain of events that included on-the-spot responses from Stafford County deputies and emergency-services workers.
Each used equipment specially designed for such incidents. Deputies and rescuers shocked his heart with an automated external defibrillator. Then, rescuers hooked him to a machine that can perform 100 chest compressions a minute — and keep working while the patient is loaded on a stretcher and carried to an ambulance.
Pete Sullivan was breathing on his own by the time he left in a rescue squad. He was in the emergency room 14 minutes after the 911 call.
Ten days later, he walked out of Mary Washington Hospital, determined to thank those who brought him back to life.
“I have looked into the face of death, and you — all of you — refused to let me continue down the valley of the shadow of death,” Sullivan told his rescuers on June 12, when they gathered at Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department. “The only thing between me and the graveyard was an emergency services team that was second to none.”
Pete Sullivan is 66 and lives in the Passapatanzy area of King George County, where he spent 46 years as a volunteer, running fire and rescue calls. At one time, he and his wife, Judy, held a county record for the most CPR saves.
On May 7, the day that probably will be forever etched in his mind, Sullivan was visiting his son at Heflin’s Automotive on U.S. 17 in Falmouth.
The younger Sullivan had been bugging his father about bringing his truck to the shop, so he could fix the squeaking brakes.
Pete Sullivan didn’t want to go. He said he’d rather stay at home, sit in his easy chair and drink coffee. He hadn’t been feeling too hot the last few weeks.
Billy Sullivan persisted — to the point that he yelled at his dad and then felt guilty.
His badgering saved his father’s life.
“Had he been at home by himself, had it been in the evening, had there been a 2-, 3- or 5-minute delay in CPR, had the deputies not been there . . .,” said Stafford Fire Chief Mark Lockhart. “There are a whole lot of variables that came into play, but I don’t think we could have written this any better. It was textbook.”
Lockhart was at the thank-you gathering with first responders. Also there was Deputy Rodney Stamm, who gave Sullivan the first of three shocks he would receive from a defibrillator.
All agreed how important it is for deputies to have the defibrillators in their cruisers and for rescue squads to have the Lucas 2 machines, which can continue chest impressions long after a human gets tired.
The machines cost $15,000 apiece, and Stafford put 10 units in service less than a month before Sullivan’s attack.
The only other local departments with the Lucas 2 units are Colonial Beach Volunteer Rescue Squad, which got two in 2011, and King George Fire and Rescue, which added one in 2012 and has a grant to get two more.
Pete Sullivan wasn’t the first patient on whom the device was used in Stafford County.
He was the first to survive.
Since then, two others have been saved, Stafford officials said.
Officials also agreed that none of the shocks or compressions would have been effective, had Billy Sullivan not started CPR.
“That was the vital role,” said Chris Smith, fire chief at the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.
It’s a part that any family member, friend or co-worker can play, officials said.
“There’s no reason why lay people can’t perform CPR,” said Lori Knowles, a battalion chief with Stafford. “Just do the compressions: push hard and push often. If they can do that, it can be a lifesaver.”
Lockhart explained that the American Heart Association no longer suggests that bystanders do the mouth-to-mouth portion of CPR. Studies have shown that cardiac-arrest victims retain more air than previously thought.
If the bystander focuses on chest compressions, that will keep the blood circulating to the brain, lungs and other organs. And that will lower the mortality rate of cardiac arrests, he said.
“For those who doubt the importance of bystander CPR, talk to Pete Sullivan,” Lockhart said. “Or better still, talk to Billy Sullivan.”
Pete Sullivan came out of the hospital a different man, in several ways. His main artery to the heart had been blocked about 95 percent, so doctors put in a stent to reopen it.
He probably had a “silent heart attack” a few weeks before his arrest, said his cardiologist, Dr. Anita Banerjee. That may have been why he was feeling so poor.
Sullivan also had low potassium, which contributed to his heart malfunction. He’s on medicine to restore those levels, and he has an internal defibrillator in his chest.
Should he suffer another cardiac arrest — because he’s more prone to have a repeat episode — the device will shock him and get his heart going again.
Banerjee said the chain of events that happened with Sullivan “is definitely very unusual.” It makes the difference between a patient who can be treated for whatever caused the problem—and the patient for whom nothing can be done.
“If everybody can get the same kind of care outside the hospital that he got—if we have people around us who are trained in CPR and CPR is the foremost important thing in any kind of cardiac arrest—we can have much better results,” Banerjee said. “It’s all about timing.”
Fire and rescue officials agree there’s no question that Pete Sullivan was dead. After he had a cardiac arrest, he had no pulse and he wasn’t breathing.
When Sullivan woke up two days later at Mary Washington Hospital, he had two questions for his family: “What the hell happened?” and what rescue unit transported him to the hospital?
Sullivan said he doesn’t remember anything from the time he was unconscious. He doesn’t recall seeing any kind of light, but he believes he caught a glimpse of his father.
His dad, Mann Sullivan, lived to be 96 and died almost six months ago. He spent his last few weeks in the home of his son, Pete.
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(c)2013 The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.)
Distributed by MCT Information Services