On Sunday afternoon, he came back from his trip and went straight to the soccer field to say hi to his friends and fellow players from the athletics club.
On Monday, he appeared on time for work at the machine manufacturing plant where he had worked for 21 years, only to learn he would have to travel to another customer the very next day.
Since there was an event taking place at my company at the same time, I called him on Tuesday at five in the afternoon to tell him I would be going out with the other conference attendees that evening. He was just on his way from the office to the company parking lot and I heard the rattling of his laptop trolley’s wheels, which he dragged behind him as he told me, fouriously, how angry he was that he was being sent to this customer far up in East Germany because, supposedly, no one else could do the job. He completely refused to understand this decision. After all, he had just spent seven weeks in China and someone had to have been handling the customer in Thuringia while he was gone! The choice to send him there now remained a complete mystery to him. The colleague assigned to accompany him also demanded that he take him to Ikea on the way up there so he could buy a desk there for his son who was studying in Karlsruhe. That meant the long drive to Thuringia would be even longer due to the stop at the home-center and the detour to Karlsruhe. Gerd just couldn’t calm down.
After about ten minutes, we ended the conversation and I set off to the meeting with my foreign colleagues. In order to save time, I decided to take a narrow country lane right through the woods. But after a short distance, I had to stop and turn the car around, because a huge tree, obviously struck by a lightning, blocked my way. Seeing the mighty tree beaten by raw forces of nature, left me feeling rather uneasy, so I turned around and drove on the regular street now.
Since my colleagues wanted to freshen up in their hotel rooms first, I was still alone in the restaurant when my phone rang. It was Justin, saying. “Mom, dad is lying down on the floor here, gasping for air!”
Ground Zero
For the next five hours, paramedics, emergency doctors and surgeons fought hard to keep Gerd alive. The rescue helicopter had landed on the soccer field near our home, but couldn’t carry him because Gerd’s heart wouldn’t have been able to withstand the pressure equalization. At least they were able to provide him with nitroglycerin as an emergency medication. A remedy which every rescue helicopter is supposed to keep on board.
Nitroglycerin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Nitroglycerin (NG), also known as nitroglycerine, trinitroglycerin (TNG), trinitroglycerine, nitro, glyceryl trinitrate (GTN), or 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane, is a heavy, colorless, oily, explosiv liquid most commonly produced by nitrating glycerol with white fuming nitric acid under conditions appropriate to the formation of the nitric acid ester. Chemically, the substance is an organic nitrate compound rather than a nitro compound, yet the traditional name is often retained.
For over 130 years, nitroglycerin has been used medically as a potent vasodilator to treat heart conditions, such as angina pectoris and chronic heart failure. Though it was previously known that these beneficial effects are due to nitroglycerin being converted to nitric oxide, a potent vasodilator, it was not until 2002 that the enzyme for this conversion was discovered to be mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase.[4] Nitroglycerin is available in sublingual tablets, sprays, and patches.[5]
I now drove from the restaurant to the district hospital right away, where I waited together with my brother-in-law for the ambulance to arrive which seemed to take forever. From the parking lot, I could see hospital staff standing on the ramp and almost an hour later, I walked over to them to ask when my husband might be expected. First, no one would tell me anything, until finally they said, “This can take a long time. If he even makes it at all!”
When the ambulance finally arrived, I could see from afar that the emergency doctor inside the van was standing up and performing CPR because, even after several resuscitation attempts with the defibrillator, Gerd’s condition still wasn’t stable.
The ambulance doors opened and I could see the entire team was completely exhausted. Sweat poured from the men’s foreheads and trickled down their faces. When the stretcher was pushed out of the vehicle, I finally caught a glimpse of Gerd’s body. His orange-striped shirt had been cut open, his bare torso was hooked up to wires, and I couldn’t tell if he was conscious or not. I wanted to run towards him, but paramedics stopped me. They told me, I wasn’t allowed to accompany the patient, but instead had to wait in the emergency room until someone would come to get me. My brother-in-law, Peter, followed me inside the hospital.
While my sister Beate and her husband, Hardy, had stayed home with Justin, Peter had driven to the hospital to be there for me. Now he told me in detail what had happened since Justin’s phone call.
Because he hadn’t been able to reach our general practitioner, Justin kept his wits together and immediately notified 911 before he started mouth-to-mouth and CPR right away.
Since my sister lived in our neighborhood, I tried to call her on my cell from the restaurant, hoping she could help in any way. I had just switched from my old telephone to a modern touch-screen and I found it difficult to use. At first, I didn’t know how to open the window, couldn’t find the contacts folder and I felt like throwing the stupid thing from the mountain terrace where I stood at that point. But finally I was able to handle it so that the four of them met on the street at our house at nearly the same time: my two sisters and their husbands. While Sigi and Beate showed the two ambulances and the emergency doctor their way, Peter and Hardy, both trained first responders, performed first aid. Justin had already bedded his father on a thick floor pillow and was continuously blowing air into his mouth and nose. But Peter and Hardy realized Gerd was clinically dead at that point. His eyes were open wide and bulging, his mouth was slack and open and they couldn’t find a pulse in his neck. The emergency doctor used the defibrillator several times, oxygen was pumped into Gerd’s lungs and, after more than an hour, Gerd was finally carried into the ambulance. Yet they couldn’t leave for the hospital now, because Gerd’s heart kept stopping several times.
Out on the street, my sisters had overheard a phone call between the emergency doctor and the chief physician at the hospital, who instructed him to cease resuscitation at a certain point. But he wouldn’t obey. Maybe he simply couldn’t disappoint Justin, who had fought inexorably to keep his father alive and had never stopped trying to resuscitate him.
A few hours later in the hospital stairwell, I happened to run into the emergency doctor who had led the rescue effort. We had never met before, but recognized each other in this awkward situation. He abruptly stopped on the stairs, looked at me and told me, in a few brief words, that Gerd had suffered a massive heart attack. The whole team had done everything they could. Even on their way to the hospital, they had to stop the ambulance several times to resume life-saving measures. What happened next was entirely in God’s hands. He looked at me silently for quite some time. I didn’t say anything, didn’t ask any questions. He was still clearly exhausted. Then, as though giving me confirmation of his words, he handed me the certificate he had issued:
Myocardial infarction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Myocardial infarction (MI) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow stops to a part of the heart causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may travel into the shoulder, arm, back, neck, or jaw. Often it is in the center or left side of the chest and lasts for more than a few minutes. The discomfort may occasionally feel like heartburn. Other symptoms may include shortness of breath, nausea, feeling faint, a cold sweat, or feeling tired.