Saving Two Lives, Four Times

"He was face down. Nobody else was around and we pulled over. He didn't have a pulse so I started
CPR and and we called people and all that stuff."

"If he [had been] ten feet down the road or in the woods -- nobody would have seen him, and they would have found him dead."

"The odds are astronomically not in favour of it. Eric is really lucky. Having a valve that doesn't open properly, to come back from CPR and then not have a neurological problem is really rare."

Dr.Corey Adams, cardiac surgeon, Libin Cardiovascular Institute, University of Calgary

"I really kind of lost my breath and had to stop fully and went over to the side of the path. I figured this is nothing... I started running again and that's the last thing I remember."

"The next thing I remember, I woke up in the emergency room of Foothills Hospital [in Calgary] surrounded by doctors."

"I feel incredibly lucky that someone was there to give me CPR [who] just happened to be an expert."

Eric McVeigh, 34, collapsed runner

Dr. Corey Adams, a cardiac surgeon at the University of Calgary's Libin Cardiovascular Institute, has saved two men in the past 18 months by first performing CPR on them in public and then, days later, operating on them. (Helen Pike/CBC)

Dr.Adams is the talk of his colleagues in medical care. From his recent experiences in encountering people in grave medical distress; when on two occasions he happened to come across serious medical collapses caused by potentially lethal heart events, he is adamant that society would be far better off if more people took CPR courses to enable them to respond with confidence should they come across people requiring rescue from death for any number of medical causes who are unconscious and unresponsive.

His colleagues think it's great good fun to tease him about the events he was featured in by fate on his part, good luck on the part of others requiring his professional expertise to save their lives, by jocularly posing the puzzle that for an esteemed professional busy enough in his trade with so many people suffering heart collapses that he really doesn't need to go out of his way to drum up more business. Even he, at the centre of the jokes, feels it to be beyond strange that those two events occurred and he just happened to be there to take charge...

A year and a half earlier he had been out for a hike with another doctor, who happened to be his wife. They had set out for a hiking trail located close to Canmore, Alberta and heard someone calling for help. When they investigated they found that an older man had collapsed. His condition was clear enough from the blue hue his skin was turning. That called for 20 minutes of CPR, until their emergency calls brought a responding ambulance and paramedics arrive to take the 60-year-old man in medical duress to hospital.

 

Shirley Parker, Darrell Parker and Dr.Corey Adams in May 2020 at Foothills Hospital in Calgary following five bypass surgeries performed by Dr.Adams who saved his life by performing CPR on him near Grassi Lakes Trail

 

It was some days on when Dr.Adams realized that the man he was performing a quintuple heart bypass in surgery happened to be the very same man he and his wife had come across during that hike. In essence, his expertise combined with the anomaly of treating this man twice; the initial CPR to restore his heart and lungs to begin breathing and the follow-up surgery to free up his clogged arteries, saved the man's life. An odd experience, to say the very least.

Yet one that repeated itself incredibly, this past August when the Adams family were out with their children to connect with nature. It was Dr.Jennifer Adams this time who realized a man who had been out on a run had collapsed nearby and with no one else around. They learned later that the young man whose aid they quickly assumed, was born with a heart defect. 

Again, Dr. Adams performed cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. Again paramedics took over when the ambulance arrived. and once more Dr.Adams performed surgery for the 34=year-old McVeigh who required a heart valve replacement. And who is alive and well because of his great good fortune in having been found by a husband-and-wife medical team who secured his life for him. 

 

Medical emergencies can happen anywhere at any time. When they happen in remote and isolated settings it takes great good luck to survive them when the miracle of a health professional just happens to be passing by.

Eric McVeigh poses in this undated handout photo. McVeigh is lucky to be alive after he collapsed while running in Calgary in August. Calgary heart surgeon Dr. Corey Adams and his wife spotted McVeigh and performed CPR on him until he was taken to hospital. Adams then performed his heart surgery days later. It's the second time it's happened to Adams who did the same thing with another man in June of 2020. (Courtesy Eric McVeigh/The Canadian Press)