North Texas cardiac arrest survivor gets to say 'thank you' to those who saved her life
MCKINNEY (CBSNewsTexas.com) - Jaimee Kirby has always been athletic so when she headed out to run a half marathon in Mckinney in April she had no clue this would happen.
"I remember my heart rate started accelerating and all of a sudden it was out of control," said Kirby.
Moments later she collapsed. All she remembers is waking up in a hospital bed.
"I remember asking one of the nurses, 'Did I just faint?, Did I not eat enough for breakfast?' and she kind of just patted me and was like, 'Oh honey, no, a little more severe than that, you went into cardiac arrest'," recalled Kirby.
Friends and fellow racers jumped into action and did CPR but there was someone else in the crowd that day that helped save her life, off-duty Dallas firefighter Kevin Luper.
"My wife was actually running the half marathon," said Luper.
While cheering for his wife with his son he spotted racers doing CPR.
"It was very impressive to see how quick the racers and other parkgoers had jumped onto the CPR," said Luper. "From there I just jumped in and helped with the chest compressions."
Within minutes the McKinney Fire Department was on the scene.
"We shocked her and started doing CPR and long story shot on the way to the hospital she was alert oriented talking to us," said Ronnie Eernisse, a firefighter-paramedic with the McKinney Fire Department. "Often times it's not that fast or it doesn't turn out that way."
Firefighters like Luper and Eernisse run thousands of calls a year, so to get to meet the person they've saved is rare.
That's why their reunion today was all the more special.
"Thank you guys so much for having us," said Kirby, hugging them both.
"These guys are the tools that god put in that day in my life to keep me here," said Kirby. "Just this huge feeling of gratitude obviously to the lord for keeping me here and letting me have more time with my kids and more time with my family."
The quick action of firefighters and bystanders is the reason Kirby is still here with her family today.
"They worked so quickly and they were so loving in their care for me you know I'm not deserving of it," she said.
Kirby has always had an arrhythmia but doctors can't explain exactly why her heart stopped.
"Now I have a pacemaker-defibrillator," said Kirby pointing to her chest.
She's back running and doing CrossFit six days a week.
"There were good people that had been in a position to take care of me and they had done just that," said Kirby.