Stanley B. Chambers Jr., Staff Writer
Durham News
Copyright 2007 The News and Observer
RALEIGH — Martha Layell doesn’t remember much about her death. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t remember anything about the morning of March 31.
She was sipping coffee and eating a granola bar in her living room when she started coughing. She felt pain in her chest and right arm. Her husband, Ezra, stopped preparing for a fish fry and dialed 911.
It was 1996 all over again, the last time Layell, 64, had a heart attack.
Emergency operators received the call at 6:52 a.m. Garrett Hoernlein, 34, Bill Ashley, 42, and Cameron Andrews, 20, firefighters with the Bethesda Volunteer Fire Department, arrived at the Layells’ home at 6:58. They were soon followed by Robert Stabbe, 48, and Nick Bryant, 59, in a Durham County ambulance.
Things didn’t look good, Stabbe recalled. He noticed that Martha Layell was sweating profusely.
“If the patient is sweating and you’re not, then something is really wrong,” he said.
Layell’s condition improved after she was given oxygen and blood sugar. But the members of the emergency crew felt she was still in danger and prepared to transport her to Durham Regional Hospital -- 16 miles from her eastern Durham County home.
Ashley and Stabbe were in the back of the ambulance with Layell. Bryant was behind the wheel.
Layell suffered a seizure before the ambulance pulled out of the driveway. Then she stopped breathing. Then her heart stopped beating.
She suffered a “clinical death,” when circulation and breathing stops. A biological death is when all body organs stop functioning.
“That’s when the training kicked in,” said Bethesda Chief Robert Andrews. “You do it out of instinct.”
Ashley and Stabbe performed CPR as Bryant, the driver, radioed for help. At Mineral Springs Road and Wake Forest Highway, Bryant briefly stopped to pick up Andrews and Joel Dempsey with the Redwood Volunteer Fire Department.
Crowded into the back of the ambulance around Layell’s stretcher, all four men worked on her, performing CPR and giving her drugs in an attempt to revive her. Soon they felt a pulse. Layell had been clinically dead for less than five minutes. Her condition was stabilized for the rest of the trip.
The early-morning cardiac call was one of three that day for the Bethesda personnel. The second person went into cardiac arrest moments after paramedics dropped her off at Duke University Hospital. What’s amazing about the three calls is that each patient survived, which doesn’t happen often, said Brandon Mitchell, Bethesda assistant fire chief.
What saved Layell was that she had a heart attack in front of emergency personnel. Her survival prospects would have been poor had she called while in cardiac arrest, Stabbe said. Had she gone six minutes without CPR, he said, her chance of survival would have been less than 5 percent.
It was also unusual that three separate agencies were trying to save her.
“It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in a lot of places, multiple fire departments assisting EMS is very rare,” said Andrews, the fire chief.
Firefighters and paramedics in Durham County often train with one another and work at multiple agencies. Bryant, the ambulance driver, is also chief of the Redwood fire department, for example. The cross-training helps when it comes to situations like Layell’s.
“You almost read into each other’s minds,” Hoernlein, the Bethesda firefighter, said. “And sometimes you get so good you can read the patient and figure out what they want.”
Layell regained consciousness four days later. She spent 12 days at Durham Regional before being transported to Duke Hospital for more tests. It just so happened Stabbe was on the crew that took her there.
“He was shocked to see me walking,” she said.
Retired from a computer refurbishing company, Layell has lived in Durham for 39 years. She often thinks about why she survived.
“The Lord saved me -- he’s not through with me,” she said while resting at home recently. “There’s something he left me here to do. Or I’d have been a goner.”