Mark and Betsy Hite of Wilton reunite with three members of the Kaiser Permanente South emergency room trauma team who restarted his heart after nearly 40 minutes of clinical death. From left, are Chase Wiley, RN, Tyrone Tiu, RN, the Hites, and Chistopher Beck, MD. A Cosumnes Fire ambulance transported Hite to the hospital.

WILTON, CA (MPG) - A month after his heart stopped, Wilton resident Mark Hite, 77,  had the chance to reunite with three members of the team who brought him back to life although he had been clinically dead for nearly 40 minutes.

The reunion took place outside the Kaiser Permanente South emergency room on Feb. 27. “I’ve got to admit, I don’t remember a whole lot about what happened when we were here,” Hite told Dr. Christopher Beck, the emergency physician who spearheaded the effort to revive him.

“I’m glad you don’t remember. We had you paralyzed.  We had you knocked out with a breathing tube,” Beck said. “You certainly put me through the gamut of almost everything I know about running a code. We had four doctors in there, probably six nurses, a couple of medical students, and a resident.  I was almost at the end of what I knew how to do.”

Hite’s heart had endured 14 shocks from a defibrillator, three times by Wilton firefighters at their home, four times by Cosumnes Fire medics in the ambulance, and seven times at the hospital. CPR was being administered continuously in between.  Additionally, the hospital staff administered 10 or 12 medications.

 Married for nearly 40 years, the Hites are grateful for his recovery. She performed CPR for seven minutes after his heart stopped at home on Jan. 25.

“I mean it was a kitchen sink effort at that point,” Beck recalled.

That’s when Beck resorted to a tool he had only used three or four times in his 10-year career as an emergency room (ER) doctor. “We had to double shock you three times and managed to get you back,” he told Hite. “But then you were in a dangerous, life-threatening arrhythmia once you got a pulse, but we still had to shock you another three or four times.”

Beck said the situation was so precarious that he hesitated to leave the ER to update the family. “We were with you for over an hour before you were safe to come out of the sickest room in the ER,” he told Hite.

One of Beck’s colleagues checked on Hite that night and found him awake, and Beck visited the intensive care unit (ICU) the following day. He recounted how they shook hands, and Hite wrote him a note.

 Marveling at the basket of goodies from Betsy Hite, who is a chef, Beck assures her that he isn’t a volunteer and gets paid to save lives.

“It was a wonderful CPR case,” Beck said. “The amazing thing is you were down for almost 40 minutes and you are still neurologically intact.”

Beck commended everyone who administered CPR, beginning with Betsy Hite and ending with students at the hospital. “Your heart was not effectively pumping for that entire time,” Beck said. “So it was those people’s hands that keep blood going to your brain to where you are awake now. They all did a wonderful job.”

Betsy Hite will never forget what happened late in the afternoon on  Jan. 25. She and Hite had come home from an uneventful test to visualize his leaking mitral valve that was to be surgically repaired in upcoming weeks at Mercy General Hospital.

Since he had fasted all day, she began to fix him some eggs when she heard his head hit the table.  She felt his neck and couldn’t find a pulse, and when she picked up his arm, it flopped down.

“I threw a glass of iced water at him, but he couldn’t talk,” she said. “So I just called 911 with the house phone and put it on speaker.”

Guided by the 911 operator, who remained calm and directive,  she pulled Hite down to the floor, cracking his head in the process. But the 911 operator assured her that was the least of her worries.

Asked if she knew CPR, she said had taken a CPR class but couldn’t remember. Reminding her of a drill sergeant,  the 911 operator kept counting “One. Two. Three. Four.” He also told her to stick to compressions with no mouth-to-mouth breathing.

The 911 operator could tell by her breathing that she hadn’t initially placed her hands in the right position and told her to move her hand down into the softer tissue. “Then I was really deep, and could see him exhaling air, she said.

At one point she heard something snap and stopped. “Oh my God, I’ve broken a rib,” she said.

“That means you are doing it right, just keep going,” he told her.

Betsy Hite appreciated how the 911 operator also kept her apprised of the arrival time for medics.

After seven minutes, four Wilton firefighters burst through the unlocked front door and swiftly took over CPR, started an IV, put nitroglycerin under Hite’s tongue, and administered the first shock. One of the firefighters realized Betsy Hite was seeing the flat line on the monitor and turned it away before they administered a second shock.

After shocking Hite a third time, she heard them say: “We’ve got something. It’s faint. Let’s go,” As they loaded him up in the Cosumnes ambulance, she directed them to take Hite to Mercy General Hospital.

“No,” a Cosumnes paramedic told her. “We don’t have an extra 12 minutes. We are going to Kaiser South Trauma Center.”

The vigil outside the emergency room was tense although one of her daughter’s friends who works for Kaiser arranged for a doctor and a social worker to meet with them in a private room.

Mark seemed completely out of it the following day at the ICU. They worried he might not wake up.  However, their grandchildren who are “super 49ers fans” still lobbied him to watch the game against the Detroit Lions.

“They all just kept saying ‘Papa, you know the Niners can’t get to the Super Bowl without you. They need you,” Betsy Hite recalled. “That when Mark squeezed our granddaughter Sawyer’s hand,” she said.
Transferred to Mercy General on Jan. 29,  Mark underwent extensive cardiac surgery on Feb.  1st, repairing the mitral valve and implanting a pacemaker/defibrillator. His recovery progressed, and he was discharged on Feb. 5.

Grateful for the care they received at Kaiser, Betsy Hite arranged for the heartfelt reunion with Dr. Beck.  She presented him with a basket of homemade Meyer Lemon marmalade, Meyer Lemon curd and scones she had made herself and her daughter Kali Dittrich gave him specialized candied walnuts from her orchard in Clements.

“You know that I am not a volunteer and that I get paid to do this,” Beck told them as he juggled the baskets of goodies.

Two of the nurses who worked that night also came outside for the reunion. Tyrone Tiu said they usually don’t know what happens to code patients after they are taken to the ICU. “For you guys to take the time to say thank you, is a big deal for us,” he said.

Hite’s case also was a reminder about why he went into nursing, Tiu added.

“You were a cool story,” Chase Wiley told Hite. “You were the talk of the town for several weeks.”

Hite was asked his thoughts in the aftermath of the extraordinary efforts to save him. “I owe my life to the dedication, skill, and extraordinary competence of a lot of people, including my wife; Wilton Fire; Cosumnes Fire, Kaiser South ER personnel, and the cardiology unit at Mercy General Hospital.  I’m looking forward to whatever is in store for me on this unexpected extension of my life.”

 Three weeks after his heart attack and two subsequent surgeries, Hite is cleared to ride his bike and resume driving.