Paul Lambert owes his life to fiancee and CPR

Tom Keyser

Mar. 21, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- Paul Lambert sprinted on the treadmill, nearing the end of his regular workout. His fiancee, Melissa Messier, was on the treadmill next to him.

They were doing everything right -- working out five, six days a week, eating healthy foods. They were trim, fit and young. Messier was 27. Lambert had just turned 36.

"Next thing you know," Messier says, hearkening back to Dec. 27 at the Healthplex Fitness Center in Clifton Park, "Paul's down and out. His treadmill's still going, and you know how in the cartoons you see these people run, and they fall, and they get shot off the back? That's exactly how it happened."

The next 30 minutes produced panic and heroics as Lambert endured the worst kind of heart attack, one caused by the sudden, total blockage of the most important artery leading to the heart. His heart stopped beating for at least 15 minutes.

Earlier this month, the American Heart Association presented HeartSaver Hero awards to Messier and the five medics who saved Lambert's life with CPR and other critical measures. Fewer than 10 percent of sudden-cardiac-arrest victims survive, and fewer still survive with no brain damage.

"You're a miracle," Michele Lieberman told Lambert at the ceremony at the Clifton Park/Halfmoon Emergency Corps headquarters. Lieberman is manager for emergency cardiovascular care community strategies for the American Heart Association.

Lambert hugged his fiancee and, through tears, thanked her. In a voice cracking with emotion, he thanked the medics one by one as they stepped forward to accept their certificates -- Mike Siiss, Rob LoGiudice, Christina Frangella and Tom Lundquist. The fifth, Carsten Strackem, was out of town. Fitness trainer Michael Kurkowski, who joined Messier in first administering CPR, will be honored at a later date.

On Dec. 27, Siiss and LoGiudice were getting ready to eat lunch at 10:55 a.m. when the call came in: 36-year-old man with a possible seizure at Healthplex. The fitness center was less than a mile away. When the two medics arrived in their ambulance at 11 a.m., five or six people were outside the center waving their arms and jumping up and down.

The medics found Lambert on the floor, wedged between treadmills and surrounded by 40 to 50 people. Messier was performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and fitness trainer Kurkowski was pressing on Lambert's chest.

Messier and Lambert had been together three years. A first-grade teacher at Waterford-Halfmoon Elementary School, Messier had studied CPR twice, while training to be a junior lifeguard and then in high school health class.

She remembers someone in the crowd saying when her fiance collapsed: "It must be a seizure." But when she noticed his nose and ears starting to turn blue, she yelled: "We need to do CPR. We need to do CPR."

She had been forcing breath into Lambert's lungs for five or six minutes when the medics took over. They found no pulse. Lambert wasn't breathing. Siiss called a second ambulance with two more medics, and a fifth arrived separately.

They continued CPR and chest compressions. This kept blood flowing throughout Lambert's body and to his brain while his heart remained dormant. They hooked up the heart monitor and defibrillator. They shocked his heart once, and then Frangella drilled a hole into Lambert's tibia and administered drugs into the marrow to aid the defibrillations. They shocked his heart two more times.

"I thought he was gone," says Messier, who after the medics arrived called her fiance's family and her own family. "I kept saying, 'Paul, you can't go. You have to stay here. You're all right. Come on, Paul. Come on.'?"

Fourteen minutes after the medics arrived, Lambert's heart began beating on its own. It had stopped beating while they were still on their way, when Messier began CPR.

The medics loaded Lambert into an ambulance and drove to Ellis Hospital in Schenectady. On the way, Siiss called the hospital, alerting workers about the incoming patient.

Dr. Robert J. Parkes. an interventional cardiologist and medical director of the catheterization lab at Ellis, inserted a stent into Lambert's blocked left anterior descending artery. A piece of plaque had broken free and blocked the blood flow in the artery. When the artery becomes completely blocked, as happened with Lambert, it usually causes death. A stent is a stainless steel tube that opens the artery and compresses the plaque. The stent, which will remain in the artery, allowed normal blood flow to return.

Lambert spent one week in the hospital. Three weeks after the surgery, he returned to work as project manager at Bonacio Construction in Saratoga Springs. Tests have found no brain or heart damage, no deficits at all from the attack that kills most of its victims.

"That's the more common outcome," says Siiss, the lead medic. "There are times when EMS providers can get pulses back and save patients. But they're almost never going to have a quality of life. They're going to be in a hospital, essentially brain dead. And eventually the family decides to pull the tube, and the patient dies."

The difference with Lambert was that his fiancee started CPR as soon as she realized his heart wasn't beating. So did CPR save Lambert's life?

"Absolutely. He was dead," says Parkes, the cardiologist. "The only reason he survived was because he got immediate help. If he was by himself, he would have been found dead. If he was at home with someone who didn't know how to begin CPR, he would not have survived."

Parkes says it's not clear why the attack occurred. Lambert had none of the usual risk factors -- high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, family history or high cholesterol.

Lambert doesn't remember the attack or most of his time in the hospital. He and Messier have returned to working out regularly and eating even healthier than before.

"It's eye-opening one minute to think you're perfectly fine, and the next minute it's life or death," Messier says.

"It's made our lives a lot better," Lambert says. "Certain things just aren't that important anymore."

He's still doing his job but not worrying as much or working as many hours, he says. He and Messier spend more time together and with family and friends. They've kept their original wedding date, Nov. 17, but started talking about having children sooner than they might have done otherwise.

And Lambert might start celebrating a second birthday. Siiss, who kept in touch after helping to save his life, told him:

"You've got a new birthday. Dec. 27 is your new birthday -- because you were gone, Paul."

Tom Keyser can be reached at 454-5448 or by e-mail at tkeyser@timesunion.com.

Learn CPR

Paul Lambert and his fiancee, Melissa Messier, are working with the American Heart Association to promote learning CPR as well as having a defibrillator and people trained to use it in fitness centers, restaurants, malls, workplaces and other public places.

The medics who saved his life are also promoting CPR.

"Our goal is to use this example to save lives in the future," says Mike Siiss, the lead medic. "You can talk to someone for days about how important it is to learn CPR, and we could have 1,000 people talking about it. But then Paul can walk out on a stage somewhere, and that's what's going to make the difference."

The Clifton Park/Halfmoon Emergency Corps will provide CPR training and CPR self-teaching kits for free from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, June 13, at the Clifton Park Center.

For more information check the corps' Web site, http://www.cphm.org/, or call 371-3880.

The American Heart Association also provides information for CPR classes at its Web site: http://www.americanheart.org/cpr. Click on "Find a Class Near You." Or call the AHA at 869-4040.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0007-33291455