In December 2022, Jacksonville resident Pam Pennington and her husband, Doug, were visiting Tallahassee to celebrate their son's 40th birthday. However, the weekend took a very scary turn that left the family with a lot more to celebrate thanks to first responders and the heart and vascular team at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH).
Pam, 68, had come to stay at her Tallahassee condo earlier in the week. That Friday night, her husband Doug, a Jacksonville family practice physician, said he was going to get on the road to Tallahassee. Pam tried to discourage him because she didn't want him driving late at night, but Doug couldn't be persuaded.
When Doug arrived, they stayed up talking and went to bed around 1 am. A few hours later, Pam woke up coughing and sneezing. As she sat on the couch, thinking that she may be falling ill, Doug checked Pam for a fever, but her temperature was fine.
Pam then asked Doug to help her walk to the bathroom and, once there, asked him to help her lie down because she was feeling faint.
“I must've felt dizzy, but I don't remember,” Pam said. “Doug said when he helped me down to the floor, I looked at him and said, 'Tell the kids I love them.'”
Doug and Pam are high school sweethearts who have been married for 46 years. They have two kids and five grandchildren.
It's a good thing Doug had come to Tallahassee that night instead of waiting until the next morning. Pam lost consciousness once she lay down and things got serious very quickly.
“She wasn't breathing, her mouth fell open and her eyes rolled back,” Doug said. “That's when I started doing chest compressions and called 911.”
When Leon County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) arrived, they took Pam to another room and continued treating her. She was suffering from a heart attack that resulted in cardiac arrest. Doug was brought to the front of their home where he was speaking with first responders.
“I kept hearing them in the background saying, 'We can't get a pulse,'” Doug said.
Around 6 am, on their son's 40th birthday, a sergeant with the Tallahassee Police Department told Doug it was time to call his kids and let them know Pam didn't make it.
First responders worked on Pam for 40 minutes. She had been clinically dead.
“I called my son Ryan and said, 'I hate to tell you this on your birthday, but your mom is dead,'” Doug recalls.
The minute Doug said those words, he heard the rescue team call out, “We have a pulse!”
Pam was rushed to Tallahassee Memorial's Bixler Trauma and Emergency Center. At TMH, John Katopodis, MD, an Interventional Cardiologist with Southern Medical Group which provides cardiovascular services to TMH Physician Partners, treated Pam for a severe heart attack. Pam suffered an ST-elevation myocardial infarction, or STEMI, which is a serious blockage of an artery that stops blood flow to the heart. Dr. Katopodis operated on Pam quickly by performing a cardiac catheterization and implanted two stents into her blocked artery.
“Coming in the door, her chances of survival were extremely low,” Dr. Katopodis said. “Her mortality probability was over 90 percent.”
During a cardiac catheterization, small tubes are placed into the heart from the wrist or groin and X-ray images are made of the arteries to find blockages. Once a blockage is identified, a stent is placed to restore normal blood flow in the blocked artery. A stent is a tiny wire mesh which is mounted on a deflated balloon. The balloon is inserted through a small tube called a catheter and is inflated inside the blockage expanding the stent. This pushes the blockage away from the middle of the artery, and blood flow in the artery is restored when the balloon is deflated and removed, leaving the stent behind. With this procedure, the heart attack is immediately stopped in its tracks.
Pam's right coronary artery had been blocked, which also means oxygen flow had been cut off completely, causing damage to her heart and making it weaker. Pam's heart had become so weak that she suffered from cardiogenic shock, a condition where her heart couldn't pump enough blood around the body, including her brain.
“Everyone was saying she may have neurological damage,” Doug said.
Luckily for Pam, and thanks to her fast-acting cardiology team, she left TMH after six days with no brain damage.
Once she was awake, Pam, a retired registered nurse, knew she was in good hands.
“I remember hearing the staff talking while I was in the ICU and thinking, 'Wow they've got it going on, they know all the protocol. I can relax.' I can't say that about every place I've worked in, but I knew everything was going to be all right [at TMH],” Pam said.
For 15 years, TMH has been home to an Accredited Chest Pain Center and has been recognized for excellence in percutaneous coronary intervention and resuscitation efforts, providing the most advanced care to patients in the region who have heart and vascular emergencies.
Pam's recovery was slow and steady, taking six weeks until she had a goodnight's rest. Pam expressed sincere gratitude that she was brought to TMH for care.
“Had I not been at TMH, I don't think I would be alive,” Pam said. “The coordinated effort, training and communication was great; that's the whole picture. I was very grateful for everyone there.”
In the United States, someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds, which amounts to about 805,000 people who have a heart attack every year. At TMH, over 9,000 patients are evaluated each year for symptoms related to heart conditions.
“We have the resources and team at TMH to help patients like Pam,” Dr. Katopodis said. “Not all patients in that condition make it out of the ICU, but with our state-of-the-art resources and collaboration with emergency services, many lives are saved.”
With over 38 years of nursing experience, Pam knows what it takes to have excellence in healthcare.
“I'm very impressed with everybody and their training,” she said. “I know we hate sitting in those classrooms sometimes, and it's hard to keep up with everything, but I could tell people really knew what they were doing at TMH.”
Now that Pam has recovered, she is enjoying spending time with her family.
“Every second that I have with my grandkids is such a gift,” she said. “You don't know how many more seconds you're going to have.”
TMH performs more minimally invasive heart procedures than any other program in North Florida and South Georgia. To learn more about the advanced heart care offered at TMH, visit TMH.ORG/Heart.
