It was November 6th at 2:30 a.m. and 60 year old Lloyd Darley of Bristol was preparing to leave for work driving an airport bus route. The last thing he remembers is sitting down on his couch to put on his socks.  That’s when his heart stopped.

“I was sleeping and I heard a huge thud. I called my husband’s name but there was no answer,” says his wife Debbie. “I ran downstairs to the living room and found Lloyd face-down and not breathing. I screamed for my son Drew to call 9-1-1.”

Debbie, a former UConn Health nurse and CPR course director who has a chronic regional pain disorder affecting her hands, taught her son Drew on the spot how to do CPR and he continued non-stop chest compressions for 5 minutes until Bristol’s ambulance arrived. “I kept telling my son to keep going,” she says.

Bristol ambulance paramedics arrived and shocked Lloyd three times with a defibrillator, and administered one-dose of epinephrine. “He then woke up, and became almost fully alert right away. We never expected him to just wake up,” says Debbie.

While still at the home, the paramedics sent a ‘STEMI Alert’ to UConn Health to inform them that they were transporting a sudden heart attack victim with a suspected dangerous artery blockage who may be in need of immediate cardiac intervention. This STEMI Alert immediately activated the Emergency Department and the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory to be prepared to treat the heart attack patient and for on-call staff to come in from home.

When Lloyd arrived to UConn Health’s Emergency Department there was a whole team of emergency medicine and cardiac specialists waiting for him including Michael Azrin, director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at UConn Health. “Dr. Azrin was there and told us his team was all set to treat Lloyd,” says Debbie. “Everything just rolled so smoothly.”

“Lloyd had a sudden STEMI heart attack due to narrowing in the left main artery of his heart causing his heart to stop,” says Azrin. “His survival is phenomenal. Patients don’t often survive cardiac arrest and without neurological damage, and especially not in the middle of the night in Connecticut. His survival is due to the great teamwork of his family, emergency services in Bristol, and emergency medicine experts, interventional cardiologists, and the doctors, nurses, and staff at UConn Health.”

It only took 35 minutes from the time Lloyd entered UConn Health’s Emergency Department’s door to have his blocked arteries opened with 2 stents in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab.

Azrin recalls the touching moment of wheeling Lloyd to the Cath Lab and patting the son Drew’s shoulder telling him “good job” for saving his father’s life with CPR.

“It feels like nothing happened to me besides my ribs are sore,” says Lloyd. “I lucked out thanks to timing and the right people being in the right place. I am looking forward to getting back to work in the job I love and seeing the sunshine every morning.”

Lloyd’s family is looking forward to spending more time with him which they say is now the most important thing in the world.

“It was because of such early intervention with CPR that his outcome is so good,” says Debbie. “Everyone in every household needs to learn CPR. It is what saved my husband’s life and it is this early intervention that really counts with a cardiac arrest.”

Lloyd says he has a strong family history of heart disease and went to the doctor regularly. He even had a recent stress test. He recommends that all families get prepared by learning CPR since his experience shows anything can happen at any time.

“And remember, laughter is always the best medicine,” says Lloyd who is thankful to his family and the Bristol first-responders who saved him, and all the doctors and nurses who treated him at UConn Health in the Emergency Department, the Cardiac Catheterization Lab, the Intensive Care Unit, and the Cardiac Step-Down Unit. Lloyd is grateful for his flexible and proactive nurses, especially Bob Santopietro, Pam Nolan, and Suzanne Machado who cared for him in the ICU.

As a precaution, Lloyd received an implantable defibrillator device to prevent his heart from stopping in the future. He was successfully discharged home on Nov. 10 just a few days after his cardiac arrest.