BOYD -- It was Saturday night and Patrick and Brandi Arnold were relaxing on the sofa, eagerly awaiting the arrival of their first child, a boy due any day.
The Western-themed nursery with cowboys on the bedding was finished. The mobile hung over the crib. The infant seat was in the car.There wasn't much to do but wait for contractions.They watched television at their house in the Wise County town of Boyd before Brandi headed down the hall to run a bath.Not until the tub was full and she turned off the faucet did she hear an awful sound in the living room."It was kind of like snoring, but it was abnormal," said Brandi, 28. "And I jumped up and ran in there, and he was pretty much gasping and gurgling for breath and air."Patrick, a machinery programmer, had complained about chest pains for a week and a half, but the Arnolds had written it off as anxiety about work and the soon-to-be-born son.But now it was clear: Patrick, only 37, was having a heart attack.Brandi grabbed the phone and called 911. As she waited in a panic, she realized not only that their birth plan was gone but also that her husband seemed to be dying before her eyes.Her son might never know his father.The ambulance arrived. She stared at it and thought, "Dear Lord, is this for real?"Full cardiac arrestWise County EMS paramedics Cole Barringer and Brandon Sutter were at the fire station when they got the call. In a stroke of luck, it was just around the corner from the Arnold home and they arrived in less than three minutes.They found a man in full cardiac arrest.They went to work -- Barringer and Sutter performed CPR and used a defibrillator twice on Patrick. Within two minutes, they detected a pulse.Barringer had noticed the very pregnant woman watching."She wasn't doing too well," he recalled. He hoped the woman wasn't the patient's wife, because he knew the man's condition was dire."I remember thinking to myself, 'I hope that is a neighbor,'" he said.In the ambulance, the paramedics started hypothermia treatment, in which cooling blankets are used to lower the core body temperature to 32 degrees Celsius. The cold preserves brain activity that is damaged when a patient is in cardiac arrest.The treatment continued for about 48 hours at Wise Regional Health System in Decatur. Dr. Jason Finkelstein, an interventional cardiologist, discovered that Patrick had a 100 percent blockage in one of his arteries.The doctor opened up Patrick's artery and inserted two stents to restore blood flow to the heart."It was very life-threatening," Finkelstein said. "If EMS didn't get there or his wife hadn't found him in time, he probably would have died."Giving birthBrandi followed the ambulance to the hospital in a neighbor's car. She waited in a private room until the doctors let her see Patrick for a short time.He was unconscious and would remain on a ventilator for days.Brandi spent most of the next two days at the hospital, not knowing whether Patrick would survive.She slept at home, but only on the sofa because it didn't seem right to sleep in their bed without her husband.She obsessed over how long Patrick had struggled to breathe before she heard him. She even timed how long it took to fill the bathtub: six minutes and seven seconds.On Oct. 16, four days after the heart attack, Charley Green, the director of the cardiac care unit at Wise Regional, called Brandi into his office. He had news."He told me, 'Your husband will walk out of here with you,'" she said. "It was the news I was waiting to hear."Green credited the seamless transition of care from the paramedics to the emergency room with saving Patrick's life.Brandi went home. At 11 p.m., her water broke. Her first call was to her sister-in-law to get a ride to Wise Regional.Her second call was to the duty nurse in the care unit where Patrick was recovering."I asked her if she would please go inside and tell him my water had broken," Brandi said. "He was still unconscious, but he needed to know."Patrick couldn't be there, so a steady stream of family and friends guided Brandi through 13 hours of labor. At 12:57 p.m. Oct. 17, Brandi gave birth to Judson Arnold, all 5 pounds, 12 ounces of him.He was born in a delivery room one floor below his father's room.'He got tosee his daddy'By Oct. 18, Patrick was regaining consciousness. He'd want to know about the baby, but Brandi worried about how it would affect his recovery. He was still weak and confused.Brandi asked the nurse: Should I tell him now? What if his blood pressure shoots up?"The nurse said, 'Well, you're going to have to tell him sometime,'" Brandi said, laughing at the memory. "I told her it was a good point!"Staffers in the cardiac care unit arranged the meeting. They wheeled Patrick, still in a hospital gown, with tubes and bandages, into a waiting area where Brandi sat with Judson.Patrick was weak and worried about holding Judson alone. But he took his son in his arms, looked down at him and said his name."I was excited," Brandi said. "It was all I wanted. I had been telling Little Man: 'You get to go see Daddy today. You get to go see Daddy today.' And he got to see his daddy."Even doctors and staffers who treated Patrick got teary watching the family."As you can imagine, everyone was crying," Green said. "It was a very unique moment."Patrick went home from the hospital Tuesday.He moves with the help of a walker but is expected to make a full recovery.He returned to the hospital the next day with his family for a photograph with some of the doctors and paramedics who saved him.The new parents pulled two chairs close together, cradled their son and smiled for the camera."These guys made this all possible," Patrick said.Alex Branch, 817-390-7689Twitter: @albranch1Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
