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My name is Steve Thomas; I'm the manager of aviation for Marathon Oil.
I was going downtown
to the marathon tower for a meeting, and
this routine traffic was heavy and by the time I
got just within short distance of the tower.
I felt a pain in my chest and
I didn't really know what it was, but it just got progressively worse.
The day before we had CPR and AED training, and it's like
you start talking to yourself am I having a heart attack or not
and you're going back and forth and then I really did think I was having one,
so I wanted to get into the Marathon building
for help because I knew help would be there. I asked a lady to help me; she called 911.
The call came into to medical department from
our tower security people,and of course to protocol
they will respond to security tower security folks will respond to medical emergencies
,but they always call us
understanding and knowing that we may or may not be able to respond thankfully
when this event happened it was in the parking lot.
Someone in our staff, Paul LeBlanc, was able was there and able to take the call
and able to respond. Well I kind of took over
assesed him really quick put the AED on him
and then analyzed it,and it said right away shock,
so everybody got back, and we shocked him,and I continued CPR
on him,and then all of a sudden he opened his eyes and sat up,so that was the first time in
my 20 years I've ever had a patient actually open his eyes and sit up
and within a few minutes was responsive enough to talk
and understand where he was and give us his name and that is a first
and I think what contributed to that was the time. The time within somone is calling. The
ability to get down there. God was on his side
that I just happened to grab the AED. They hadn't afforded to
tell me that it was chest pain everything just kind of fell in line
to be successful.
The ambulance came, picked me up, and took me to the hospital.
They took me to the Heart & Vascular Institute over there in
Memorial Hermann.
While I was in there, I had another heart attack ,and it started getting worse again.
They quickly took me up to the cath lab and
did a procedure and put the stint in
,and while I was doing the catheterization
my heart stopped again, they shocked me one more time ,so
it all happened very quickly
and unexpectedly ,and then by the time you're done you're like it's all over.
It's surreal what you think of
One of the doctors came out and talked to me
explained all the events up until the
moment that we were at ,and he drew a
picture and
told me that they would take me back in a little bit
,and they would let me see him and
at that time all the Marathon people were around me.
I had lots of support
and love. It was all a miracle that day. There was more than one.
Everything fell into place with the being in the right place being with
Marathon
people that trained and put these policies in place to train their people
and that have AED's available
to getting to the right hospital to have the
correct procedure done as fast as possible. So from the
time that response began from the time Steve went down
to the time he ended up in the cath lab at a local medical facility
was about 30 minutes just unbelievable unheard of we had calls from cardiologists
telling us that we really in fact saved his life or the response
effort saved his life so it was an amazing response for Marathon
employees
and the tower security folks and then
Paul and my staff as well. I think Steve is very fortunate; he understands and knows that
he was very fortunate but
clearly the HA the
CPR, AED training contributed to that life saving effort
I'm back to 100 percent.
Everything that you can do now as a normal life, everything I do with my
family is normal.
Every day is a gift so do what you can and try to fill it up
with memories, and
your work is a part of your life so fill that up with memories.
The recovery's been great. The doctors been great to me.
I have had
two check ups now, and I am back to one hundred percent, so
from there for now on its like everyday is a gift; it really is a gift ,and everybody has that same gift.