Traumatic rescue of man at beach also a life lesson
“I thought he was dead. There was no way this was going to have a happy ending.”
That was the conclusion of a good Samaritan as she watched medics rush off to a hospital with a beach volleyball player strapped in a gurney.
Patricia Lufsy had been walking her dogs along Bayside Walk on Mission Bay when she spotted the athlete after he had collapsed face-first in the sand. A teammate was trying to lift him up.
“I’m a physician. Can I help?” she yelled, rushing over. “I looked at his eyes and they were completely dilated. He was unconscious and lifeless.” She couldn’t feel a pulse.
Lufsy is no stranger to emergencies. As a rehab doctor, she frequently works with stroke patients, heart attack sufferers, injured veterans and brain trauma victims. She immediately started administering CPR, doing her best to keep the 32-year-old volleyball player alive until EMTS arrived.
“It felt like 10 minutes, but you just can’t stop,” she said. Emergency technicians then took over. They shocked him several times with an automated external defibrillator. But he didn’t regain consciousness.
“I’ve done this before in hospital settings but never on a beach,” said Lufsy, who wrestled with her doubts. “Once he left, I broke down. I started crying. Had I done enough? Had I done the right thing?”
She worried that the young man might survive with crippling brain damage leaving him in a permanent vegetative state.
“She was inconsolable as she was not able to save his life,” says acquaintance Bonnie Sinclair. Then she dramatically added: “Au contraire.”
A call came from one of the volleyball teammates giving Lufsy the good news. Kevin Nill had survived. He was at Prebys Cardiovascular Institute where doctors found his LAD (“widowmaker”) artery 95 percent blocked, immediately cleared it and inserted a stent. Then they cooled his body to limit brain damage.
Twenty-four hours later he slowly emerged from the induced hypothermia state. Nill first squeezed his hands, then pushed his feet and, when the tubes were removed, started talking. He had no memory of the volleyball game or of his collapse.
“My very first memory, still cloudy, is being in the recovery room upstairs,” Nill told me.
A major breakthrough occurred on the fourth day of recovery when Bill Jefferson, Nill’s partner of 11 years, walked into the hospital room.
“I failed my memory test,” Nill informed him. Jefferson was ecstatic: “Do you know what good news that is? You remembered you failed the test.”
Later that day, Lufsy and Nill’s beach volleyball teammates met in the hospital lobby and signed a volleyball with get well wishes.
“We walked into the room and there he was sitting up, as handsome as can be, with his beautiful blue eyes,” said Lufsy. “I felt like he was my son. We all had a huddle and just cried. I can’t explain how happy I am. If I die tomorrow, I can feel like my life is
fulfilled.”
You see, Lufsy has had her own share of medical trauma. She was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago and beat it, only to have it return three years later. Again, she went into remission, but it taught her to savor each day.
“I’m a cancer survivor so I always live my life with each day as a gift. Every day is spent trying to do something positive to help people change their lives for the better on a small scale — maybe through a healthier diet or exercise.”
She also collects hearts and gives them to people. “I gave Kevin a quartz heart to represent my heart and his heart,” she said. He held on to it in the hospital room, Jefferson confided.
Nill, who works for a downtown digital advertising agency, said Lufsy will be part of his life from now on. “We are just connected in a way most people will never have.” His near-death experience has reset his overall focus on the bigger picture — on people and on love — rather than on little things that can bring you down every day.
The incident was traumatic for Jefferson, too, who received a call warning him
to prepare for the worst. He was shocked because his partner was in top physical shape with no family history of heart ailments.
Jefferson urges people to take CPR training and have the “conversation” with loved ones about what they would want you to do in the face of a similar situation. “A car accident, a gun shot, a heart attack ... anything can happen in a heartbeat,” he said.
As for Lusfy, she doesn’t know why she veered from her routine on the morning of Feb. 9. She normally walks her dogs at 6:30 a.m., but on that day she got sidetracked playing her guitar and took them out closer to 7:30 a.m.
“Is there a reason she played her guitar too late Sunday morning and forgot
to take the dogs out?” wondered Jefferson.
“I was meant to be there at that moment,” said Lufsy. “I don’t know why, but it’s life changing.” Not just for her but for all those involved, who noted that the sky is bluer, the grass is greener and the sun is more brilliant.”
“It’s such a blessing that he is alive and well and able to talk, and hug, and cry and laugh,” Lufsy said. “I am so over-the-top grateful.”
She has no doubt that if she hadn’t come along, the outcome would have been different. “It’s surreal to take someone so young and keep them alive long enough that the (emergency room) doctors can work their miracle.”
diane.bell@sduniontribune.com