“Full circle”: North Metro Fire captain reunites with hospital staff who saved his life
Denver Post
Nearly a year after having a heart attack on the job, a Broomfield fire captain reunited with the physicians who saved his life in a homecoming he said will live with him forever.
After 28 years working as a firefighter, fire Capt. Jim Prochazka has completed his fair share of annual performance assessment tests — measurements that ensure he and his fellow first responders are fit to perform their job duties. Last March, Prochazka’s annual test went as it always did, until the team loaded into the truck to head home.
“We jumped back into the engine to come back home,” Prochazka said. “Coming down I-25, I just started sweating, like really sweating bullets.”
Despite a lack of chest pain or other symptoms, he said that something felt wrong. His fears were confirmed when he asked a medic at the fire station to take a look at his heart through a monitor.
“(The medic) came in and he did a 12 lead on me,” Prochazka said. “He looked at it and then went into the office and called for a medical unit to come to the station.”
The 12 lead electrocardiogram (EKG) is a diagnostic test for detecting abnormal activity in the patient’s heart, where 12 nodes are attached to the body.
“That piqued my interest, I was like ‘OK you need to tell me what’s going on,’” he said.
When the medic showed Prochazka the results, he saw that he was having a heart attack.
Prochazka was taken to the emergency room at Good Samaritan Hospital in Lafayette where, after only five minutes, his heart stopped, and he went into cardiac arrest.
“I was telling myself ‘I’m gonna be fine, I’m having a heart attack but I’m not going to die,’” he said. “And then the lights just went out.”
He later learned that he went into cardiac arrest twice, for a total of 10 minutes. Once hospital staff got his heart beating on its own again, he was taken into a special lab for emergency treatment.
Shana Bolliger, the hospital’s cardiac nurse manager, explained that the treatment area, known as the “cath lab,” is where patients are taken to be treated for heart attacks.
“When you’re having a heart attack you’ve formed clots … in that artery which then stops the blood flow to the heart muscle,” Bolliger said. “The only way to stop the heart attack is to open that vessel back up.”
In the cath lab, Bolliger and other staff members use imaging to locate the clot. They treat the patient by removing the clot and placing a stent, a small piece of metal that works as scaffolding to keep the vessel open.
Although the procedure is painless, patients are sedated to keep them calm. Prochazka was also intubated so he could breathe easily during the procedure.
In rare cases, patients can be resistant to the medication and remain aware of their surroundings — and this happened to Prochazka. He said the medication didn’t work for him.
When he woke up in the cath lab, he described the experience as being aware while unable to move. He said it felt like he was being separated from his body. He thought he was dead.
“There was a point where I thought I was going to heaven … my vision was very narrow and all I could see was white,” he said.
Instead of passing through the pearly gates, Prochazka passed through the doors of the cath lab, where staff worked quickly to treat his heart attack.
In the ICU afterward, the nurses helped him communicate through eye movements before he was able to speak, and once he was released from the hospital he began the long road to recovery.
“It was tough to get out of bed,” Prochazka said. “It really took it out of me, not being able to do anything for a month.”
In addition to resting so his heart could heal and adjust, he also had injuries to his ribs from the chest compressions that restarted his heart.
“My ribs were separated from my sternum from getting compressions,” he said. “It was the worst pain that I ever experienced in my life — and I have been through some things that were pretty rough.”
With the one-year anniversary of the incident coming up on March 12, Prochazka said that reuniting with the hospital staff that saved his life made him feel like he’s come “full circle.”
“It was weird being on the other side, with me thanking them because I’ve been in the fire department for 28 years and I’ve done handfuls of these reunions,” Prochazka said “To be the person that was thanking them — that was a very different experience. It took me a while to be OK with it, because I was always on one side, and it was a very unique and humbling and gratifying experience to see the other side.
“(The reunion) was a really good healing experience for me… it was a weight off my chest and my shoulders to see them all and open up about it and kind of let it all go.”
Prochazka said his recovery is going well. He returned to light duties at the fire department in August and is continuing to improve while he focuses on staying healthy.
“I want to thank everybody again that was involved,” he said. “I’ve said ‘thank you’ a bazillion times, but I just wanted to make sure that I said it again. And I’ll continue to say it.”
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