The Story Of A Life Saved…

Dana West says that it’s thanks to Grace Cottage Hospital that he’s alive and well and able to tell the story of the day he almost died. Employed at Grace Cottage as an Emergency Medical Technician since July 1, Dana finds that his near-death experience helps him as he works with cardiac patients on the Grace Cottage Ambulance.

“I’ll never forget the date,” recalled Dana. “October 21, 2001. I’m a member of the Jamaica Fire Department, and we were doing a live burn [upon request, burning down an abandoned house]. All of a sudden, I felt as if a spear had gone through my chest. I was 33 — too young to have a heart attack, but I fit the profile and I knew what was happening. I ate all the wrong things, didn’t exercise, and had smoked over a pack of cigarettes a day since I was 18—a bad habit I picked up when I spent two years in Panama with the Army.”

“I got out of the fire, signaled for help, and 15 emergency workers were there almost immediately, from Jamaica, Wardsboro, Londonderry and Grace Cottage. The Grace Cottage Ambulance took me to Grace Cottage Hospital, where the Emergency Room doctor, Wally Griffiths, and the nurses stabilized me with a variety of medications, including baby aspirin. They sent me on to Brattleboro, and the doctors there decided to put me on the helicopter . In 25 minutes I was at Dartmouth Hitchcock, but I felt so claustrophobic in that helicopter—the cargo areas of the Black Hawks in Panama were bigger than that entire helicopter. I was also worrying that it would crash and I wouldn’t be able to get out because I was strapped to a gurney”, laughed Dana. “The things you worry about when you’re dying of a heart attack! I’d been conscious the entire time, but it only took about two hours between the time I had the chest pain and the time I arrived at Dartmouth, with lots of medication given at Grace Cottage and at Brattleboro.”

Dana was wheeled right from the helicopter into an operating room; four hours of surgery involved clearing two clogged arteries via angioplasty, then the installation of a stent. Four days later, he was released from the hospital and Dana entered a three-month outpatient cardiac rehab program at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. “Quitting smoking was no problem,” Dana recalled. “The doctor at Dartmouth said: ‘You smoke, you die’. I stopped. Besides, I had no cigarettes left. My mother, who had been trying to quit, smoked my last pack as she followed me to all the different hospitals! She doesn’t smoke anymore either.”

“What I’m pretty sure of,” said Dana, “is that I wouldn’t have survived as far as Brattleboro if Grace Cottage hadn’t stabilized me first. The ambulance crew and ER staff saved my life. Now I can help save others.”