The Man Who Died a Hundred Times

The Man Who Died a Hundred Times

3/2/2005 7:53:11 PM

None of the Piedmont Hospital doctors or nurses had ever seen anything like it, nor had any of their colleagues anywhere in the country, nor was it in any of the scientific literature.

For 12 hours on November 20th, circumstances threw Piedmont's emergency department and cardiac staff together with Atlantan Jim McClatchey to make medical history.

McClatchey's normal, daily routine is, well, routine. He sits behind a desk, most often, at his family's aluminum finishing business. It is generally routine -- except for the day his life turned upside down.

"The first thing I remember is waking up and having my wife standing there, talking on her cell phone to 911," he said.

McClatchey had collapsed and was unconscious. He thought he'd had a seizure. Instead it was "V-Fib" -- ventricular fibrillation - or what is commonly known as cardiac arrest.

"The survival rate is between one and five percent, and so most -- 95 to 97 percent -- die at home and they don't never get to the hospital," said Dr. Charles Wilmer, a cardiologist at Piedmont.

The fact that McClatchey got to the hospital alive was amazing enough. What happened next made medical history.

"He was so unstable that he would literally be shocked, go back into regular rhythm ong enough to start to wake up and then he would fibrillate again, and lose consciousness and we'd have to shock him again," Dr. Wilmer said.

In the first hour, McClatchey's heart stopped 50 times and he could see it coming. "I remember seeing the heart monitor. It's kind of amazing to watch your own heart….And you know you have about three or four seconds before you're gonna black out," he said.

Dr. Wilmer and his team had never seen anything like this before. "We really were sort of thinking on the go -- how can we save this man's life? -- We've tried all of the proven therapies, he's not living, so let's take a chance, let's take a step [and] see if we can advance the science," he said.

They would simultaneously be checking McClatchey's heart for damage, while trying to stabilize it and while shocking it back into rhythm.

McClatchey died a hundred times on November 20h and was shocked so frequently and so severely that he sustained second degree burns to his chest.

"You just keep shocking him because you realize that if you don't shock him back into a regular rhythm, you're gonna lose him," Dr. Wilmer said.

McClatchey, fortunately, was brought back each time. "Not only do I feel fortunate I survived, I feel fortunate it happened," he said. "I really have been given a great gift, I've had an experience that very few people get to have."

McClatchey was in perfect health with no family history of heart disease at the time of his attack. His doctors believe a flu-like virus attacked his heart and believe the cardiac arrest triggered by over the counter medicine.

His story will be told to heart specialists around the country and the how and why of he survived could lead to advances in the treatment of cardiac arrest.