A chance encounter saved a life and grew a friendship
The serendipity of it all. That Tom O’Brien would choose that fateful Friday to break with his running routine.
That Denis Fellman would collapse on a lonely stretch of forest preserve trail mere seconds before O’ Brien would come by.
That O’Brien, a Palos Heights optometrist, would be trained in CPR.
A year has passed since their paths crossed and both Orland Park men still struggle to make sense of it all. Why would otherwise healthy Fellman collapse in cardiac arrest? Why wasn’t it O’Brien’s wife, Debra, a nurse with experience administering CPR, who encountered the fallen man?
Meanwhile, Fellman and O’Brien, their wives and their children have become bonded, forever grateful for a hopeful outcome to a near-tragic event.
Recently they gathered in the living room of the Fellman home to retell the story that still is so raw it is punctuated by pauses, tearful reflection and poignant stoicism.
Seconds count
On Sept. 14, 2018, the O’Briens went for a run through Swallow CliffWoods in Palos trail system of the Cook County Forest Preserves. Although they run the trail often, they typically don’t on Fridays. But they were getting ready to go on a trip and so had an extra day off.
Around 8 a.m., about a mile into their routine, Debra O’Brien, who is faster, had moved a good thousand feet ahead of her husband. So she didn’t see Fellman turn onto the trail where it intersects with the path heading towardHorsetail Lake.
Neither of the O’Briens saw Denis collapse.
Tom O’Brien came around a bend and found him lying on the ground.
“At first I didn’t believe I was seeing a person. I thought hewas a like a log or something,” O’Brien said. “He was laying on his hands. So must have gone down quickly.”
O’Brien dropped to his knees and tapped Fellman on the back. When he got no response, he flipped the 6-foot, 5-inch man over and watched as he let out a loud cough and then stopped breathing.
“I’m an optometrist but I don’t do emergency medicine,” O’Brien said. When it comes to CPR, he added, “I’m just like any other person who’s learned it but hasn’t practiced it.”
Because Debra didn’t encounter the man, O’Brien said he knew the incident had likely just occurred.
He’d forgotten his cellphone that day, something he says was “stupid,” but he quickly found Fellman’s and hit the emergency button.
As emergency dispatch talked, O’Brien said he applied handsonly CPR, pumping vigorously on Fellman’s chest and praying fiercely for someone to come along.
Cook County Forest Preserve Police Officer Michael Parzygnat was the first to do so.
“I observed Tom performing CPR,” he said. “It really was perfect timing that hewas there.”
Parzygnat said while there were quite a few people on the trail that day, the area where Fellman collapsed is a section that sometimes doesn’t get a lot of traffic.
Forest Preserve police know the trails “like the back of our hands,” he said, but they still rely on individuals who call for help to pinpoint locations.
Despite the stress of the moment, O’Brien was able to provide lots of information, Parzygnat said.
“That’s howwe got there so quickly. We knew they were in the Swallow Cliff area, close to Horsetail Lake, on a gravel trail just past 104th Street. Quite a few trails come off of there but with the information we got from him we were able to get there.”
Though the preserves are dotted with emergency call buttons, Parzygnat said everyone should carry a phone. “At the very least, let somebody know where you’re at.”
If you do need help, he said, use mile markers and landmarks such as street names, trail names or bodies of water to help authorities find you.
And, he added, “I suggest everybody get CPR training. This is a perfect example of why. He saved a life; he really did. Because he had training he knew what to do.”
‘You need to come to the hospital’
O’Brien said first-responders worked on Fellman and then took him away on a stretcher.
“That’s the last I knew of it,” he said. When he reunited with Debra, he was sobbing, doubting that the fallen man had survived, she said. It would be weeks before he learned he’d saved a life.
Meanwhile that morning, on the south campus of Lyons Township High School, Emily Fellman’s phone dinged.
“Denis never calls me at work,” said Emily, who teaches French.
She stepped out of the computer lab where she’d beenworking and listened to an urgent message from a representative of Palos Community Hospital: “You need to come to the hospital.”
“I started screaming,” she said.
Doctors still don’t know why Fellman, who was 44 at the time and so healthy he frequently ran a 6K loop through the forest preserves, went into cardiac arrest, Emily said.
That morning, though, “he went into ventricular fibrillation,” she said. “VFib. On his file it says ‘sudden cardiac death.’ ”
Two doctors told him, “You were dead and you came back,” she recalled. “It’s hard to hear that.”
Subsequent tests have revealed no clues to the cause, she said. Anda defibrillator thatwas installed in his chest to prevent it from happening again has not had to do its job.
Nevertheless, Emily has had their three sons — Etienne, Xavier and Louis — tested. She has also purchased a $1,000 defibrillator for their home.
Fellman is a computer engineer who has worked for Argonne National Labs and is now employed by Global Eagle, which developsWi-Fi for airlines. He is also a published author on the European Center for Nuclear Research’s God Particle Experiment.
He spent a total of 10 weeks in hospitals, rehab center and at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago.
Though he has returned to work four days a week, he still does not remember the events of that fateful day, nor much that happened immediately before and after his collapse.
He says he nowis at 80% and continues towork with a personal trainer at the nearby Sportsplex. Soon, he said, he hopes to be driving again.
“A lot of information is gone,” he said. “I have memory issues. I have to repeat everything pretty much.”
Emily said, “The holes in his memory areweird.”
Grateful for family and friends
Fellman grew up in Alsace, in the east of the France. Emilywas raised in Kankakee.
They met while he was serving in the French military and she was studying abroad through Notre DameUniversity.
They still laugh about how she tried to pass herself off as French and he immediately picked up her “funny” Midwest accent.
The couple has lived in San Diego aswell as France but, she said, they are happy to be back in the Chicago suburbs, close to her family now.
“When something like this happens, you need a village,” she said.
Though Fellman has not returned to the forest preserves since the incident, the O’Briens continue to run there frequently.
“WhenI go past the spot, I get a funny feeling,” Tom O’Brien said.
The two couples recently marked the one-year anniversary of the incident with a gathering at the Fellman home. The O’Briens’ daughter, Brynn, painted a picture of the two men walking together on a wooded trail.
“We’ll all go back one day, when Denis is ready.
We’ll take wine and some cheese and crackers,” Tom O’Brien said, chuckling.
Emily said friends, church members, neighbors and colleagues have all helped the family get through this past year.
“Tom and Debra have gone above and beyond. Tom brought Etienne to a basketball game when I couldn’t swing it. They donated money, donated money from their church. Tom answers my texts when I’m freaking out,” she said.
“Emily has been amazing through it all,” Tom O’Brien said. “I like to think we’re sort of like family.”
That, and more, Emily said.
“When I first called Tom, I said, ‘Hi this is Emily Fellman. You saved my husband’s life.’ ”
Now, amongthe contacts in her phone, there’s an entry for “Tom O’Brien, Lifesaver.”