For those who may not know my father, Michael, in 2014, he had a viral infection that attacked his heart. Within 6 months, his heart went from working 100 percent down to 11 percent. After this, he had a defibrillator and pacemaker put in to help control his heart rate as well as aid in pumping. Currently, only 22 percent of his heart is working. For some time, everything appeared to be staying fairly calm. However, in April 2021, he was driving when his defibrillator shocked him after sensing his heart beat increased to 200 beats per minute.

This caused him to black out and get into an accident. Luckily, nobody got hurt in this accident but, over the past 2 years, his pacemaker has gone off over 40 times. The scariest thing about this is that we never know when it is going to happen until it happens. The most recent and terrifying time that it happened was the early morning of Sunday, March 19th. He was attempting to stand up out of the car and told me that he felt light-headed. I told him to stay sitting and ran inside to go get my sister. Luckily, my sister and I know the signs and were already dialing 911. About 15 seconds later, I ran back out and saw he was passed out in the front seat without a pulse and lost all motor function. He was passed out for about 45 seconds to a minute with no detectable pulse. Movac showed up within 5 minutes and helped us get him inside where they hooked him up to a heart monitor. While sitting down answering questions, one EMT just happened to look down and see that he had almost flatlined while sitting right there talking to us. We learned that his heart completely stopped working in those moments and that the only thing keeping his heart going was his pacemaker.

We then decided it was best for him to take the ambulance to the hospital.

Eight minutes into the ride, his heart went into ventricular tachycardia, or v-tach and his pacemaker had shocked him. After that, Movac began rushing him to the hospital where it shocked him for a 2nd time and EMTs were then about to shock him with their own pads.

He was shocked one more time once he reached the Emergency Room. EMTs and doctors say that if he did not go to the hospital when he did, then it would have been fatal. Since that night, he has gone back to the hospital four different times and his defibrillator has zapped him over 20 times over the course of the past three weeks.

One of the times he went to the hospital, they discovered that he had a leaky heart valve. To help with this, he has to go to Albany Med for an ablation on April 26th.

We are looking to use the money from this to put in a chair lift on our outdoor steps. There are 10 steps leading up to our front door and it is getting too difficult for him to safely go up and down them. If there are any funds left after the chair lift, it will be going towards putting in a handicapped shower as well as hospital bills.

For those who do have the pleasure of knowing him, know that he is always the one to make everyone laugh, even with the EMTs, paramedics and hospital staff right after a scary situation. They also know that he is never one to ask for anything from other people but is always willing to do what he can for them. My family and I appreciate any little donation and we want everyone to know it will be put to great use for things that will help him get around easier.