When a Heart Stops Beating: A True Story of Health Crisis
By Kara Ranck, RN, BSN
There is nothing like getting a wake-up call at 3:30 am and
hearing your mom’s panicked voice saying, “Kara needs to come. Dad is in
cardiac arrest and is not responding.”
That type of call is enough to stop anyone’s heartbeat. My nerves are
tingling even now as I type this eight months later. That was the unforgettable
call my husband Trevor and I received on Wednesday, May 2, 2018. I have never
moved so quickly after waking up. As I dressed, Trevor prayed and said he would
take care of the kids. All I remember about the drive to my parents’ house is
crying out to God. “God, be with my dad. God, save my dad. God, you love my dad
more than I do,” I prayed over and over again. Because, you see, I believe in
God. I believe in a God who can heal people when science and statistics say no.
I believe that God loves my Dad so much He died on a cross for him and that if
my dad died that morning, he would be safe in heaven because he trusts Jesus as
his Savior [1]. As a registered nurse, I know that when your heart stopping
beating and blood stops flowing, it means death. Death to brain tissue and
normal function. Time is tissue. The longer you go without blood, the more
tissue you lose.
When I arrived at the end of my parent’s road, I saw the
eerie reflection of ambulance and police lights in the darkness. I pulled into
the yard and sprinted towards the house where they were wheeling my dad out on
a stretcher. I could see he was on a ventilator to help him breathe, and I
think I first asked the paramedic how Dad was. He replied that Dad was
currently stable. I then spoke to my dad. “Dad, I’m here. Jesus is with you. I
am praying for you.” I thought I saw his eyelids move. Next I looked beyond him
and saw my mom and middle sister who were telling me to go with Dad in the
ambulance. As I sat in the front, I asked the EMT who was driving what had
happened and how long my Dad was “down,” meaning how long his heart was not
beating normally.
My mom had awakened around 3:20 to my Dad making a loud
sound. He normally snores so she tried to wake him up, but received no
response. Then the sound stopped. She
saw very quickly that something was not right and called 911. My dad is broad
and six feet while my mom is petite and a little over five feet. She was not
able to move or help him. God, in his great mercy, had a police officer
stationed at the end of their road that night. He and another officer arrived
within five minutes. Let me say that again- five minutes. Wow. Two ambulances
arrived within another five minutes. Wow. Yet, they needed to shock my Dad’s
heart numerous times and “worked” on him for about 20-30 minutes before his
heart returned to a normal rhythm. My dad has a pacemaker related to a previous
and different heart issue. Several days later, we got the pacemaker report that
showed my dad’s heart had gone into ventricular fibrillation around 3:15 am
that morning and remained in that lethal rhythm for 33 minutes. Remember how I
said time is tissue? Thirty-three minutes is an awfully long time for your body
tissues to not receive the blood they need to function.
After arriving in the emergency department (ED), I was shown
into a waiting room. Shortly after, my mom and sister arrived as well. We
waited for what seemed an eternity, talking with the chaplain, paramedic,
hospital staff, and updating family and close friends via phone. Praying. They
told us that they needed to resuscitate my dad once again during this time
period. And then we were told my dad was going upstairs for a heart
catheterization to check if this event was caused by blockages to his coronary
arteries. Before they took him, we went back to the ED to see him. He remained
intubated and sedated, but that didn’t stop my family from talking with him. We
said, “Dad, we’re here. Mom, Elise, and Kara.” He nodded his head. No lie.
“Dad, Nalene (my oldest sister) is praying. She sent Psalm 121.” He nodded his
head again as we read the verses to him [2] . We sang to him. He nodded again,
and also moved his left side when the tech was drawing lab work. “God, he’s
still here,” I prayed.
When they called us into the conference room after dad’s
heart cath, I was sure they would say he had severe blockages to his arteries,
and they would need to perform open heart surgery. Instead, Dr. Andersen, the cardiologist, said in a
somewhat surprised voice that dad had no blockages and his heart looked
great. “We think this may just be a
rhythm issue.” Our next stop was the ICU, where doctors planned to start dad on
hypothermia. When a person has a cardiac event, his or her body goes into
defense mode. It starts using up oxygen, sugar, and electrolytes in an attempt
to preserve function. This defense mechanism also damages the body, so
decreasing a person’s body temperature helps to shut the body down so it cannot
further damage itself. Before a person is cooled to 91 degrees Fahrenheit,
there is some testing necessary. While dad was waiting for a CT scan, we got to
see him in the ICU. Again, we talked to him and played his favorite song on the
phone. He responded, moving his eyelids and lips around his breathing tube.
Honestly, it was hard in those moments to truly believe we
were seeing him respond. I know I questioned whether or not it was real. Even
though I wanted it to be, I knew, based on my scientific knowledge, it was not
probable. But those moments of hope, whether I fully believed they were true,
helped us walk through the next 48 hours. During that time, dad was intubated
(on the ventilator), fully sedated and paralyzed- in a medically induced coma
during hypothermia. At times, when his sedation was running low, we saw him
respond again with fluttering eyelids and restless movements. I hoped these
were purposeful responses, but there was no way to know what was left of the
dad I knew before.
And then came the statistics and prognosis. If dad survived,
doctors said, he would probably have neurological deficits since his heart had
not been pumping for those thirty-three minutes, and he might require nursing
home care at least for a time. Thud. That’s the sound of hope hitting the
floor. We stood by dad’s side and prayed and sang for the longest two days of
our lives. During this time, my mom had requested for our church, family, and
friends to pray that God would fully restore Dad to health or take him to
heaven. The thought of the in between was a lot to bear, and yet we had an
undeniable peace.
During crisis, we can choose to focus on our great need at
hand and despair or see the
provisions we experience and find encouragement. One of the greatest blessings
was the teamwork exemplified by my mom, sisters, and I. When people work
together as God designed, it is only by His grace and to His glory. Crisis can
draw people together or push them further apart. I saw God at work in the way
my mom, my dad’s faithful partner and advocate, kept going, and going, and
going. I saw how our family, friends, and church stepped in to meet needs-a CD
player and CDs, transportation, babysitting, meals, prayers, prayers, and more
prayers, mowing the lawn, coming at 3:30 am to be with my mom & dad,
traveling, missing work, and the list goes on. The staff at the hospital was a
blessing-past coworkers of mine giving hugs, a saint of a cleaning lady with
the voice of an angel singing and praying with us, nurses and doctors who gave
compassion along with expert medical care, and a dear chaplain providing
support in the middle of the night.
And then came Friday morning. By this time, my dad’s body
temperature had slowly returned to normal, his sedation was turned off, and the
paralyzing agents were removed. I received a call about 6:00 am that my dad was
awake, but I was to come quickly because he was very distraught. For the next
several hours, while he was alert but unable to breathe on his own, we talked,
read, sang, and kept him calm as we waited for the ventilator settings to be
weaned and then removed. The pulmonologist (lung doctor) finally arrived and
told dad the ventilator could be removed. He received a thumbs-up in response.
My heart leapt! Dad was still here. All the signs that were hopeful were true!
But yet, what was to come? As a nurse, I was able to remain in the room when
they took the breathing tube out (extubated) Dad. And I will never ever forget
saying, “Hi Dad” and hearing a “Hi” in response. As is turns out, my dad is completely
neurologically intact. He functions the same as he did before his cardiac
arrest. One week after his event, he was home from the hospital (equipped with
an internal cardiac defibrillator). Three weeks later, he was back at work.
That makes it all sound easy, I know. It wasn’t. There are still physical and
emotional repercussions he experiences. But it was miraculous.
I know that some may be reading this thinking that the
medical care dad received led to his astonishing outcome, and yes it did. But
it takes some pretty dang good CPR to maintain adequate blood flow to a
brain just to survive, let alone function at 100%. If the medical community had
a way to insure all outcomes were this good, they would in a heartbeat (pun
intended). Many doctors will tell you that the typical result of a cardiac
arrest, such as my dad experienced, ends in a grave. My dad’s cardiologist Dr.
Gohn told him, “I am a man of science, but you had a higher power on your
side.” He also told him that the survival rate for cardiac arrest is 3% with 1%
returning to normal or close to normal quality of life. Evidence shows those
who receive CPR as soon as possible have the best outcomes. Some may say, “What
a lucky coincidence that the police and ambulance crews were so close and responded
so quickly.” I say it was a divine appointment. The neurologist told my family,
“Wow. It was your prayers that did this.” An ICU nurse told my dad, in a visit
afterwards, he didn’t think my dad would make it.
We can say a lot of things. But the God of the Bible, whom I
believe in, can do this. The God who creates life can just as easily sustain
life [3]. The God who made our hearts and blood can insure our brains and
bodies get the oxygen they need if it’s His will to sustain us [4]. I think
that the hard part about every miracle though is that there are those reading
this that have not experienced a miracle. Maybe you have sat beside a hospital
bed for days, weeks, months and witnessed life lost. And you question why your
loved one was not spared, when mine was. Honestly, I do not know. I am so sorry
for your loss and have experienced loss myself. What I do know, is that there
is a plan beyond what we can see now [5]. I know sometimes loss drives us to
God while sometimes miracles do. And I know that regardless, we need to share
our stories, because sometimes we need the hope of a miracle or the pain of a
loss to see that which is beyond ourselves.
[1] Romans 3:21-24
[2] Psalm 121
[3] Genesis 1:26-27
[4] 1 Samuel 2:6
[5] Isaiah 55:8-9
“let it be known to all of you and to all the people
of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified and
whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing here before you
healthy.i 11 This Jesus is
the stone rejected by you builders,
which has become the cornerstone.
12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no
other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:10-12
Kara Ranck lives with her husband, two preschoolers, and 200 cows
on their family dairy farm in Pennsylvania. Beginning in May 2019,
Kara will curate a blog called The Rock + a Hard Place, a collective
site of essays giving testimonies of
how God (the Rock) meets people in their hard places. You can follow on
Instagram @therock.and.ahardplace or the blog at https://www.therockandahardplace.com 
