EAU CLAIRE — Dave Rowe plans to gather with friends today to celebrate his 75th birthday.
It’s a party that almost didn’t happen after the lifelong athlete and Altoona resident suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and collapsed recently while playing pickleball.
Thanks to prompt cardiopulmonary resuscitation and an AED shock administered by his pickleball friends, Dave is among the less than 10% of people who survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest — a medical crisis that the American Heart Association says kills nearly 350,000 people a year in the United States.
“I was just lucky it happened at the courts, that they have a defibrillator and that someone there knew CPR,” said Dave, a retired Chippewa Valley Technical College marketing instructor and former member of Altoona’s City Council and school board.
The morning of Wednesday, July 3, began like many other summer days for Dave. He woke up, ate a banana and headed for the pickleball courts at McDonough Park in Eau Claire.
After arriving at 7:30 a.m., he played for about an hour when his heart suddenly stopped. He crumpled to the asphalt on Court 12, scraping his face in the process.
On the next court, Julie Hasenberg heard someone yell “Dial 911!” She told playing partner Dan Szymanski to retrieve the automated external defibrillator the Chippewa Valley Pickleball Club keeps in a bathroom adjacent to the courts and ran over to the circle of people gathered around Dave. His skin was pale, he wasn’t breathing and he had no pulse.
“He was gone,” Hasenberg recalled.
Though she had never previously performed CPR or used an AED in a real-life situation, Hasenberg said her emergency medical training kicked in. The former owner of Highland Fitness Center lifted up Dave’s shirt and started chest compressions as onlookers chanted the song “Staying Alive” to help her keep the beat for the rapid pace required for effective CPR.
“I thought to myself, ‘You’re not dying, Dave. Not today,’ ” Hasenberg said, her voice cracking at the memory of leading the rescue effort for a friend she has played pickleball with dozens of times over the past three years.
Meanwhile, Szymanski retrieved the AED and handed it to a younger, faster player and asked him to run it to the far corner of the 12-court facility to save precious seconds.
Upon delivery, after about three minutes of chest compressions, Hasenberg opened the AED and followed the simple instructions. After she applied the pads to Dave’s torso, the device said no heartbeat was detected. Hasenberg ordered “Clear,” and pushed the red button to give Dave an electrical shock.
Then Hasenberg waited for the device to reassess Dave’s condition.
“It probably took about 30 seconds, but it felt like forever before the AED declared, ‘Pulse detected,’ ” Hasenberg said. “Then all of a sudden Dave opened his eyes, took a big, gasping breath and started breathing again on his own.”
Hasenberg advised him not to move and asked him a few basic assessment questions before EMTs arrived a few minutes later and transported him by ambulance to Mayo Clinic Health System.
As the ambulance pulled away, Hasenberg and five other women gathered in a circle and shared a prayer.
“When you see someone who’s not breathing and suddenly they take their first breath and you see their chest moving up and down again on its own, that’s an amazing feeling,” Hasenberg said. “It was a miracle. It truly was.
“This could have happened anytime, anyplace, but it happened there. I consider this divine intervention.”
Sue Rowe, Dave’s wife and a retired Mayo physician, recognizes how fortunate Dave was to have all of the links in what the American Heart Association calls the “chain of survival” fall into place.
“If this had to happen, it could not have gone better,” Sue said. “To have people right there, immediate CPR, an AED handy and an ambulance and great medical care minutes away, everything was in place for Dave to be saved.”
Indeed, timing is everything. Dave, an avid biker who has ridden at least 1,000 miles annually for the past 39 years, had just biked 16 miles by himself the day before his cardiac arrest and recently returned from a Hawaiian vacation during which he and Sue completed several strenuous wilderness hikes far from the nearest AED.
“I can’t count the number of times we’ve been off the grid,” Sue said, noting that the couple frequently visit their cottage in northern Chippewa County and just last fall completed a three-year quest to camp in all 37 Wisconsin state parks that offer camping.
“We’re still processing how incredibly blessed and lucky we are,” said Sue, an Altoona City Council member. “We can’t express enough of our gratitude and thankfulness for the group effort to literally save Dave’s life.”
When friends told Sue that Dave should go out and buy a lottery ticket, Sue had a ready response: “I told them Dave just won the biggest jackpot there is.”
Dave recognizes his good fortune. According to Hasenberg, Dave brought tears to her eyes with his first words when he talked to her in an emotional phone conversation from the hospital: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
Greg Helgeson, president of the Chippewa Valley Pickleball Club, said he was proud of the actions of club members in Dave’s time of need.
“This event is an incredible example of people coming together in a life-saving effort, the use of CPR to keep the oxygen circulating and the power of the AED to bring back a heartbeat,” Helgeson said.
With studies showing a person’s chances of surviving cardiac arrest increases significantly to 50% to 74% when immediate defibrillation with an on-site AED is available, CVPC members wasted no time getting the McDonough device back in service. They replaced the pads and redeployed the AED within an hour or so of Dave’s medical emergency.
The incident also served as a powerful reminder of the importance of rescue training. The club has sponsored such training in the past and is working to provide more training this summer or fall.
“Our goal is to improve member confidence in applying CPR and the use of an AED in case they are in a situation to save someone’s life,” Helgeson said.
Dave said he has always supported increasing public access to defibrillators. Not surprisingly, his scare has only made him a stronger advocate. That will happen when a person hears their cardiologist say, “You were dead.”
As for Dave’s condition, tests showed that a stent and new heart valve he received last year were still working well and that he has no new signs of heart disease. Doctors then diagnosed him with an arrhythmia and fitted him with an internal pacemaker/defibrillator intended to regulate his pulse and shock his heart back into rhythm if necessary.
When he went home three days after the ordeal, he was still a bit shellshocked and sore from the 11 ribs broken during CPR, but mostly thankful to be alive. He understands it is literally a case of short-term pain for long-term gain.
As Sue said, “Effective CPR breaks ribs, and ribs heal.”
Almost immediately upon his return home, Dave was back to walking as much as a mile a day and cracking jokes even though laughing made him grimace in pain. He also openly wondered how soon his rib discomfort would subside enough that he could increase his activity level and lobby for doctors to permit him to resume biking and playing pickleball.
For today, Dave joked that he is thankful his friends and family will be coming together for a birthday celebration instead of a celebration of life.
His ribs may force Dave to accept only gentle hugs at the event, but today’s birthday wishes undoubtedly will carry deeper meaning than usual, as attendees celebrate a life — one saved by alert friends and the life-restoring power of an AED.
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