Bernie Phillips does not remember seeing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in a movie theater the first week in January. He does not remember celebrating New Year’s Eve with his family and friends, or a family trip he took in the following days.
The first thing he remembered from Dec. 31 on was waking up in a hospital bed at Albany Medical Center seven days later with no recollection of how he got there.
The 48-year-old Colonie resident knows of what happened to him only through the accounts of others.
`At about 5 a.m., my wife noticed my breathing wasn’t right,` said Phillips, a physics teacher at Schenectady High School.
Phillips said he was asleep and his wife, a science teacher, knew there was something wrong. So she picked him up, laid him on the floor, and began performing CPR.
At 5:15 on Saturday, Jan. 3, Agnes Phillips called 911, after being unable to revive her husband, and by 5:20, Phillips said, the First Responders were at his home.
It was then that the Colonie Emergency Medical Services team defibrillated Phillips five times in an attempt to get it beating once again.
`They didn’t actually get my heart beating until 5:46,` he said.
Once stabilized, Phillips was transported to Albany Medical Center with what Colonie EMS Medical Director Dr. Michael Dailey called ROSC, return of spontaneous circulation.
Dr. Dailey took care of Phillips at the hospital.
`Basically, he came into us completely unresponsive, in a condition that we look at as potentially futile,` Dailey said.
From there, Dailey said the doctors at Albany Medical Center had two options: to put Phillips on a ventilator and let fate take its course, or to try a treatment that had never been completed before in the Capital District that involved cooling Phillips’ body to slow down the blood flow to his brain.
The program, called therapeutic hypothermia, is currently only available at Albany Medical Center, although other local hospitals are in the process of bringing it to their institutions, Dailey said.
`I knew that the technology was available, and I knew we were in a position to do this,` he said.
Dailey said the treatment begins with an induced coma, putting the brain on a sort of vacation. Phillips was then covered with cooling pads that went on top of his skin, the cooling measures never entering inside his body.
`It makes sense if you think about it,` said Phillips. `If you ever bruise yourself, you put ice on it.`
But Phillips’ risk without the treatment was much more severe than a bruise. As he was told later at the hospital, only a small percentage of individuals who survive a cardiac arrest do so without any brain damage.
The cooling pads that lowered Phillips’ body temperature to 91.4 degrees sought to prevent that damage.
The doctors were not sure of the results of the treatment until Phillips awoke three days later.
On Thursday, Feb. 12, Phillips stood with his wife and children, Nick, 11, and Alex, 6, before the Colonie Town Board, to help Town Supervisor Paula Mahan present the many EMS responders who helped him that night with citations for their efforts.
`Basically, I’m alive because of the actions of the chain of survival,` said Phillips before the public and Town Board, after Colonie EMS Deputy Chief Peter Berry explained the `chain of survival` as a series of steps designated by the American Heart Association to use in an emergency cardiac situation. `I really owe you my life and that’s a beautiful thing.`
As he publicly thanked the EMS responders and Dailey, Phillips said, `These people saved my life. It’s beyond Hollywood drama.`
Phillips said he is feeling fine now, and in a couple of weeks his doctors should have the results on what caused his cardiac arrest.
For now, he said, he plans to focus on spending time with his family and continue cycling, one of his hobbies, which he said he will use to gauge his health.
“