{"id":105807,"date":"2015-11-12T09:01:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T14:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=105807"},"modified":"2016-07-28T11:27:11","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T15:27:11","slug":"patient-perspective-lloyd-darley-on-the-road-to-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2015\/11\/patient-perspective-lloyd-darley-on-the-road-to-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Patient Perspective: Lloyd Darley on the Road to Recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 That’s when his heart stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sleeping and I heard a huge thud. I called my husband\u2019s name but there was no answer,\u201d says his wife Debbie. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s ambulance arrived. \u201cI kept telling my son to keep going,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Bristol ambulance paramedics arrived and shocked Lloyd three times with a defibrillator, and administered one-dose of epinephrine. \u201cHe then woke up, and became almost fully alert right away. We never expected him to just wake up,\u201d says Debbie.<\/p>\n

While still at the home, the paramedics sent a \u2018STEMI Alert\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

When Lloyd arrived to UConn Health\u2019s 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. \u201cDr. Azrin was there and told us his team was all set to treat Lloyd,\u201d says Debbie. \u201cEverything just rolled so smoothly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLloyd had a sudden STEMI heart attack due to narrowing in the left main artery of his heart causing his heart to stop,\u201d says Azrin. \u201cHis survival is phenomenal. Patients don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

It only took 35 minutes from the time Lloyd entered UConn Health\u2019s Emergency Department\u2019s door to have his blocked arteries opened with 2 stents in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab.<\/p>\n

Azrin recalls the touching moment of wheeling Lloyd to the Cath Lab and patting the son Drew\u2019s shoulder telling him \u201cgood job\u201d for saving his father\u2019s life with CPR.<\/p>\n

\"On<\/a>
On the road to recovery, Lloyd Darley with his son, Drew, and wife Debbie. (Lauren Woods\/UConn Health Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt feels like nothing happened to me besides my ribs are sore,\u201d says Lloyd. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lloyd\u2019s family is looking forward to spending more time with him which they say is now the most important thing in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was because of such early intervention with CPR that his outcome is so good,\u201d says Debbie. \u201cEveryone in every household needs to learn CPR. It is what saved my husband\u2019s life and it is this early intervention that really counts with a cardiac arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd remember, laughter is always the best medicine,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDr. Azrin was there and told us his team was all set to treat Lloyd,\u201d says Debbie Darley. \u201cEverything just rolled so smoothly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":105827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2231,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[175],"class_list":["post-105807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-well-being","category-uconn-health"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-03 09:56:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105807"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106091,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105807\/revisions\/106091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/105827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105807"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=105807"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=105807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}