Clay Today staff
ORANGE PARK -- Dolphan McFadden can provide all the details to anyone who asks about how his heart stopped as he was playing basketball at the Dye-Clay YMCA.
Unfortunately they aren’t his memories. That’s because he was technically dead until they got his heart started using a combination of CPR and an automated external defibrillator (AED).
"It seems like a story they are telling me about someone else. But I can’t relate to it. I can’t remember any part of it," McFadden said three weeks after the Jan. 4 incident.
The last thing the 52-year-old Orange Park financial consultant remembers is picking up two of his five children at Jacksonville International Airport earlier in the day and then heading to the YMCA for an early afternoon basketball game.
What they tell him is that he had been there about 15 minutes when he "fell out" because his heart stopped beating.
Fortunately, a nurse who works at the Barco-Newton YMCA’s Daystar program, Jennifer Thompson, was the Dye-Clay Y on Moody Avenue with her boyfriend, who was playing in the over-40 men’s league. When McFadden collapsed, he ran to get Thompson while someone else dialed 911.
At the same time, YMCA volunteer Bill McCarthy began doing CPR on McFadden.
"They did a combination thing on me. He did the CPR and she did the AED," McFadden said. "The problem was they weren’t able to keep me breathing. They did a couple of shocks but they didn’t hold."
Paramedics arrived and took over, giving him an injection and running an intravenous line to jump start his heart, which he learned later had gone into a condition called ventricular fibrillation.
He wasn’t out of the woods yet, though. He needed another shock in the ambulance on the way to Orange Park Medical Center where he began to stabilize.
Doctors later surgically implanted a defibrillator device in his heart to help prevent a similar occurrence.
This is the third time an AED, which cost $1,700 each, was used to save someone’s life since they were placed in all Northeast Florida YMCAs in 2004, said Nikos Westmoreland, director of communications.
"Each time we’ve had to use the AED, we’ve been able to save the person’s life," Westmoreland said. "Those outcomes served to fortify our belief in the need for an accessible device at all locations, and for all of our staff to be trained, ready, and able to use them."
McFadden has since been released from the hospital. The retired General Motors worker from Ohio, who moved here and began working in the financial industry and teaching businesses classes at FCCJ, is now taking it one day at a time and slowing down.
"I used to be someone who had trouble sitting down. I would keep pretty active," he said. "Now I am getting chauffeured around until they clear me to drive again."
He may also give up his twice weekly routine of basketball for something a little more sedate like golf.
As for McCarthy and Thompson, McFadden said they’re actions kept him alive to enjoy more time with his wife, Victoria, and his five children.
"To me they are like angels being at the right place at the right time. The timing was impeccable," he said. "It was sheer coincidence that (Thompson) was there to operate (the AED)."
"I’m just thanking God that I am alive."