Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, some wry exchange with a stranger or acquaintance… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and strikes a contributor as interesting or funny or poignant—or that makes us appreciate living here.
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Dear Daybreak:
“You can forget this ever happened,” my cardiologist recently said regarding my decade-long history with heart disease. This was remarkable, given my five-page medical dossier that includes multiple cardioversions to correct atrial fibrillation, a cardiac arrest, an in-hospital heart attack, six stents, double-bypass open-heart surgery, and insertion of a pacemaker. While I was glad to know I had become the very picture of a healthy 68-year-old, there was one part of my medical odyssey I will never forget—a testimony to all those who help strangers in the Upper Valley.
It all happened 10 years ago yesterday, on April 16, 2015, as I was riding my bicycle 24 miles from Fairlee to my office in downtown Lebanon. Just after 8 a.m. I was on Route 120 and had just passed the northern entrance to DHMC across from Jesse's Restaurant. Then the lights went out. I suffered what is aptly termed “sudden death syndrome” and fell to the pavement. It was at that moment that what I would later call my “flash mob” sprang into action.
Weiping Liu, a software engineer, had just turned onto Route 120 after his morning workout at the River Valley Club. He could see commotion in the distance as he came down the hill headed for his office in Hanover. A reclining figure blocked the southbound lane and traffic leaving Hanover was backing up. As he pulled over to help, a woman darted across the lanes of traffic, her cell phone in hand.
Laura Barrett, a librarian at Dartmouth, was already dialing 911 and rushing to the scene as Weiping followed. He recognized my condition as a cardiac arrest. Within a minute of my fall, he was administering CPR, having trained for just such an event following the untimely death of a colleague years before due to this same affliction. For the next five minutes, Weiping’s vigorous chest compressions kept me alive and prevented long-term brain and muscle damage until police from Lebanon and Hanover arrived with a ventilator and defibrillator that restored my breathing and pulse. Throughout, Laura continued to relay information to the emergency dispatcher with the assistance of others. I was whisked away in an ambulance 14 minutes after my fall for the short ride to the emergency room, leaving the traumatized group of bystanders somehow to resume their day.
Meanwhile, Sheila Conley, a nurse at DHMC who monitored incoming heart patients in order to give advance notice to the appropriate doctors, was startled to see my name on her computer. A good friend and neighbor from when I lived in Orford, she was amazed that the ambulance could arrive so quickly. She went to the emergency room to verify that it was really me and then received permission to be the one to contact my wife, Bonnie MacAdam, with the difficult news. She met Bonnie at the hospital and stayed with her to translate the medical assessment of my touch-and-go situation. Sheila’s kindness tending to this other victim of such an event made the next three days immensely easier for her.
Once in the hospital, I received multiple stents in the catheterization lab to open previously undiagnosed three-vessel arterial blockages. I was then put into a hypothermic medically induced coma to reduce the risk of brain damage. One of the lab attendants later told me I was “one scary dude” when they rolled me in. I woke up three days later, remarkably intact and cracking jokes. It was then that I learned about the quick action of multiple bystanders, several of whom cared so much that they found out about my fate and reached out to meet me.
Thus began the annual celebration of my “rebirthday” every April 16 with my three principal rescuers. Ten years later we are still in touch. How fortunate was I to have this all happen at the entrance to a world-class medical center? Even more so, how fortunate to be in a community of extraordinary people ready to perform heroic acts, the flash mob that I will never forget.
Rescuers’ Dinner 2018 (L to R): Bonnie MacAdam, Sheila Conley, Doug Tifft, Laura Barrett, Weiping Liu
— Doug Tifft, Fairlee
Dear Daybreak:
I found last week’s item about the Norwich dairy farm asking Dartmouth to buy them interesting. It would not be the college’s first foray into the dairy business. I have an old fashioned milk box (from when they used to deliver milk right to your house!), some bottles, and a milk bottle cap from back then. One item is from Fullington Farm out on Lyme Road, which was where the organic farm is now.
— Keith Quinton, Hanover
Did you miss the last Dear Daybreak? Here it is!