Nurses in right place at right time
The angels aren’t always on your shoulder. Sometimes they’re running right behind you. You could say that what happened to Kevin Franks was either a marvel of modern medicine or a tribute to good fortune. Some might even call it a miracle.

 
 
The Dallas Morning News
Andy Jacobsohn/The Dallas Morning News
Kevin Franks of Dallas hugs emergency room nurse Sara Fleming while meeting with nurses and paramedics who saved his life following a cardiac arrest at an October run.
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5K runner’s heart stopped, but angels were all around

mramirez@dallasnews.com

Published: 25 December 2016 11:56 PM

“Saving a life is the most intimate thing one can do. To be given the gift of life, for a second time, to continue on the path put before us, is one that cannot be repaid. The joy of giving that gift is only known by a very few that walk among us.”

— Flower Mound council member Don McDaniel, at a luncheon honoring those who tended to Kevin Franks after his collapse

 

The angels aren’t always on your shoulder. Sometimes they’re running right behind you.

You could say that what happened to Kevin Franks was either a marvel of modern medicine or a tribute to good fortune. Some might even call it a miracle.

On Oct. 1, the 43-year-old production manager for a Dallas law firm was running Flower Mound’s Neon Night 5K when he suddenly collapsed, his heart stopped in cardiac arrest. Four emergency-room nurses from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Flower Mound who were participating in the race — Felicia Harding, Sara Fleming, Meredith Gautney and Matthew Terbeek — began lifesaving measures to keep blood flowing to Franks’ brain until medical crews could arrive.

On Dec. 15, the Flower Mound Rotary Club honored the individuals who helped make possible Franks’ journey back to health.

Here’s their story, in their own words.

 

Franks: I run three to five times a week. The only reason I knew about the Neon Night 5K was because of my girlfriend. I decided to participate at the last minute.

Jenna Cummings, Franks’ girlfriend and an eighth-grade teacher at Flower Mound’s Forestwood Middle School: This was my second year to do the Neon Night 5K. Kevin and I were hanging out by the starting line. We were stretching, and he was giving me a hard time because he’s a faster runner than I am.

Sara Fleming, ER nurse: It was actually my first 5K. One of the girls here got a big group to go and the hospital sponsored us, so there was quite a big group from Presby there. Several of us had seen [Franks] before the race; he appeared very fit and had all the gear on. You could tell he was a runner.

Meredith Gautney, ER nurse: He’s the one you saw at the beginning of the race and said, “OK, if I can keep with him, I’m doing great.”

Franks: After that, it gets fuzzy for me. My girlfriend sent me the picture that we took before the race started, but the only thing I can remember about that day is trying to park my car. I actually don’t even remember taking the picture.

 

The race begins, with Franks among the more accomplished runners near the front.

Cummings: I was able to keep my eye on him for a little while, but then I lost sight of him.

Franks: Apparently I was two-thirds of the way through the race when I collapsed.

Fleming: We heard him hit the ground. It was right around the intersection of Spinks and Garden Ridge.

Felicia Harding, ER director: It was the first time I ever ran a 5K. We were kind of trotting, me and Sara, and the way the course went, it went down the street and came back on the other side of the median.

Fleming: We were running one direction, and he had already gone around the median, running the other direction. He hit face-first and I knew something was wrong because he didn’t brace his fall.

Harding: This man wasn’t getting up or moving.

Fleming: Other people had stopped and were around him. I got down in his face and noticed he wasn’t breathing, and I checked for a pulse, and he didn’t have one. The best chance at survival is immediate CPR, because the longer a person is down without any intervention, the less likely they are to survive.

 

Meanwhile, nurses Gautney and Terbeek, who had been running ahead of Fleming and Harding, arrive on the scene from the other direction, just behind Franks.

Harding: I started the initial round of chest compressions. It was difficult being out there without the equipment you’re used to. We needed suction — when he fell, he was bleeding out of his mouth, and we needed to clear his airway. You feel a little bit helpless. It was like, I know what needs to happen but I don’t have the tools or equipment — so you just do the best you can.

Fleming: Matt [Terbeek] was keeping him stable. I was nervous, kind of in shock, like, I can’t believe this is happening. We just did what we had to do. We were wearing glow sticks; it had been a fun night, so you go from a moment of joking around with a friend to “OK, we have to get very serious right now.”

Cummings: I happened to be about two or three minutes behind him. By the time I got to where he had collapsed, people had him blocked off.

 

Within five minutes, a Flower Mound Fire Department crew from nearby Station 5 was on the scene with a mobile intensive care unit.

Capt. John Wright, Flower Mound FD: It happened a mile from the station, so we were there pretty quick. The scene was very crowded. I remember seeing five or six people working on him, and I was about to start clearing people out when one of them said they were nurses from Presby. They continued compressions and gave us a quick report while we got our equipment ready.

Fleming: They took over and put him on monitors. He was in a shockable rhythm, so they shocked him a second time, and on the third one, he had a rhythm and a pulse and they got him loaded up in the ambulance.

Wright: It shows how effective bystander CPR is. What you’re doing is buying time and keeping the brain and vital organs alive while emergency crews are responding.

 

And just like that, the man they had fought to save was gone, in an ambulance headed to Lewisville Medical Center.

Harding: It was actually a surreal moment. There’s a guy we had no history on and no name.

Fleming: We didn’t know if he was going to be OK. A few hours after I got home, and ever since that night, I couldn’t get his face out of my mind. All I could remember was looking at his pupils, the glassy look. That haunted me for a while. We didn’t know if we’d ever see him again.

Cummings: I was at the finish line looking for him, and a lady came up to me and said she saw a man collapse and she thought it was Kevin. I found a cop who told me the ambulance was headed to the hospital. I had my moments in the coming days, but that evening I held it together.

 

After several days, doctors determine that Franks’ cardiac arrest had been caused by a small blockage in his coronary artery.

Franks: The first thing I remember is waking up in the hospital strapped up to all this stuff. You realize that you don’t remember what happened or how you got there.

Cummings: His condition improved dramatically in the coming days. Ten days after he fell, he called to tell me good night. It was the first time I’d heard his voice since his collapse. And I knew he was going to be OK. He was in the hospital for 18 days in all.

Franks: I did a couple weeks of rehab. Because of the shape I was already in, I didn’t require much personal care. I was there mostly to monitor my heart rate and blood pressure while I was getting back on the path to exercise. Everybody felt like I would be fine.

Fleming: We had been calling Lewisville Medical Center to check up on him. I called one day and he’d been discharged, and I had really wanted to visit and meet him, to see his face. I called one of the ER secretaries and I knew she couldn’t give me his info, so I gave her mine. He called a week or so later, and I was at work, having a horrible day, and when I listened to the voicemail I instantly started to cry.

 

On Dec. 15, the Flower Mound Rotary Club honored the medical workers at its monthly luncheon at Salerno’s Italian Restaurant, with Franks in attendance. It’s the first time the nurses had seen Franks since the day of the race.

Fleming: I cried when I saw him. He had sent pictures over the Thanksgiving holiday of him and his family and his recovery, saying, “You made this possible.”

Franks: I knew it would be emotional. You don’t get this kind of outcome all the time — in fact, not even most times. Apparently I don’t have any collateral damage — no brain issues, no heart muscle damage. It’s a testament to a lot of things, including how fast I was taken care of.

Wright: The circumstances for his incident were all favorable. He just happened to fall in front of a pack of highly trained nurses, which is nothing less than a miracle. You can call it fate, luck, divine intervention ... but it simply wasn’t his time.

Franks: I’ve been back at work more than a month now. And I’m back to jogging up to 4 miles. As much as I run, it could have happened anywhere, anytime, and the fact that it didn’t — that’s not an accident to me. For me, God was in control the entire time, even before I knew what was going on.

Harding: It actually gave me a new life quote going into 2017: “Life is not by chance, it’s by purpose.” For whatever reason, he has a second chance at life, and not everybody gets that. One thing I tell my staff every day is, “You never know when you’ll get a chance to be an angel for somebody.” And for him that day, we did get a chance to be angels.