Location of Event – Home
Let me take you back to early 2016. I was (so I thought) a healthy man who ate right, was active, and lived a good life. My wife and I had just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary on April 24, 2016. The evening of May 25, 2016 (a little over a month later) after having a nice dinner with friends we went to bed around 10 pm. I felt tired but great that night, nothing else out of the ordinary. I had been doing some remodeling in our home the day prior before we went out for dinner so I was chalking up my fatigue to the amount of work that I had done that day.
My wife Rose awoke around 12:30 am to what she at first thought was me snoring. She touched my arm as she usually did when I snored to get me to turn over. This time when she touched me she sensed something was wrong as I did not move. She immediately turned the table light on and started to shake me to wake me up. After a few seconds she realized she needed to call 911 as something was very wrong, I was not responding to her at all.
She says to this day that she does not know what took over her body, but felt as though she was having an out-of-body experience at the time. She grabbed her cell phone from her dresser and called 911. Rose immediately blurted out our address and then went on to state she could not wake me.
The dispatcher told her to get me on the floor and start CPR. This was not an easy task to get me on the floor by herself as I am bigger than she and she had a back issue at the time. Rose knew this was serious so she went into action and pulled me to the floor (kerplunk). Once she started CPR (she had never done it before), she did not stop until the EMT folks arrived.
Widow Maker is what my dear wife was told three short hours later.
I spent six weeks after in the ICU unit at the hospital. During this time, Rose was at my side at all times still not knowing if I was going to survive the entire ordeal or not. It took seven stents and many many months of rehab to get me back on my feet.
All of the doctors and nurses involved in my case from that evening to this day have said many times over that I am a very lucky man to have had Rose by my side and that she acted as she did. I know that I have a living angel in my wife. She always was my angel prior to this, but she has proven that she is worthy of the name by saving my life.
Nominated by James Lang