A thankful heart
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Linda Johnson stands next to Canton Township volunteer fireman Richard Pitzarella, center, and Dale DeAngelo, of DeAngelo Funeral Home, while at the Canton Township fire department Saturday. Pitzarella thanked them for performing early CPR on him moments after he suffered a heart attack Sept. 25.
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Richard Pitzarella, in center in uniform, and his wife, Sandy, also in center, stand in front of a Canton Township fire truck, surrounded by first responders and bystanders who saved Richard Pitzarella’s life two months ago. From left are Ambulance & Chair Executive Director Larry Pollock, EMT Kristelle Esterhuizen, Ambulance & Chair Assistant Director Rob Cannon, EMT Trinity Daigle, EMT Ryan LaCoe, Washington police officer William Kohne, Linda Johnson of Avella, Washington police officer Daniel Florian, and Dale DeAngelo, owner of DeAngelo Funeral Home.
Richard Pitzarella has a lot to be thankful for this year. Mostly, he’s thankful to be alive and for all the people who worked together to bring him back from the brink of death just two months ago.
Pitzarella, 61, of Canton Township, has been a volunteer with the township fire department for 25 years. He’s referred to as “fire police,” directing traffic on accident calls to ensure the safety of crews working at the scene. Just after 2 p.m. Sept. 25, he was notified of a crash on West Chestnut Street.
“I put my uniform on, and I remember getting into the car,” he said in a recent interview. “Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital.”
Pitzarella woke up four days later after suffering a heart attack and “technically” dying.
“I passed away twice, and they brought me back,” he said.
A series of interventions by good neighbors and a team of professionals saved Pitzarella that day. Linda Johnson, a certified nursing assistant from Avella, was the first on the scene.
Her vehicle was stopped at the intersection of Henderson and Jefferson avenues when she saw a fire police car with a blue light drive up a grassy hillside on the property of DeAngelo Funeral Home.
“I thought to myself, ‘Something’s not right,'” she recalled in a recent interview. “Once it’s in your heart that you know something’s wrong, you have to do something.”
She drove into the funeral home parking lot to investigate, saw the driver slumped over in the car, and called 911. Pitzarella, the driver, wasn’t breathing. Johnson checked for a pulse, and said it was “extremely weak.”
“I knew he was in trouble,” she said. “He was already turning colors.”
Johnson couldn’t get him out of the car, so she started performing chest compressions inside the car.
“The next thing I know, somebody asked if I needed help,” Johnson said.
Dale DeAngelo was leaving the funeral home when he saw the commotion happening near the parking lot.
“She threw her arm up like she needed help,” said DeAngelo, owner of the funeral home. “I noticed the man in the car was slumped over on his side – that’s when I realized he was in peril. He was gray.”
Together, Johnson, DeAngelo and another unknown bystander got Pitzarella to the ground, where DeAngelo continued compressions.
“If it wasn’t for those two starting CPR right away, I probably wouldn’t have made it,” Pitzarella said. “By the time the first responders get there, a lot of time has lapsed. You only have a certain amount of time to bring somebody back.”
It only took a couple minutes for emergency crews to respond. Washington police and fire arrived along with EMS workers from Ambulance & Chair.
“The ambulance crew was phenomenal,” DeAngelo said. “They were professional, and their knowledge and capability of things was just amazing.”
EMT Kristelle Esterhuizen and paramedic Brad Catto arrived first and took over CPR. Catto said Pitzarella had no pulse and was not breathing when they applied a cardiac monitor and delivered a first shock. They administered cardiac medications and an IV, intubated him and applied a mechanical device to administer the chest compressions.
“We were trying everything that we could possibly think of,” Catto said in an interview. “I think we ended up giving like 20 different medications on scene just to try to bring this patient back. I didn’t think we were going to have success. He was dead on scene.”
At one point, Catto said, Pitzarella was regaining color but was still without a pulse.
After five shocks, Ambulance & Chair executive director Larry Pollock called the agency’s medical director for further instruction.
“He gave us the authorization to do double sequential defibrillation, which is kind of an unheard of thing in EMS,” said Ambulance & Chair assistant director Rob Cannon. “It doesn’t happen too often. A couple of us have done it before, so we tried that.”
Cannon explained that they hooked up Pitzarella to two cardiac monitors, charged them both fully and shocked him.
“We took him off the ground about six inches,” Catto said. “We got a pulse back.”
Meanwhile, at Canton’s fire station, Chief Dave Gump had been listening to the call over the scanner. He had no idea that the patient was one of his own men.
“I was thinking, ‘CPR in progress – this sounds like a bad one,'” Gump said. “And then my phone rings, and they said, ‘That’s Pitzarella.'”
Pitzarella’s wife, Sandy, had spoken with her husband just moments before she got a phone call saying he was in trouble. When she arrived, she watched as he was being placed in the ambulance.
“They just said, ‘Yeah, he died twice on us,'” Sandy recalled. “I was all shook up. I didn’t think he was going to pull out of it at all, just from what they told me.”
Pitzarella was taken to Washington Hospital and transferred by helicopter to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh. During the drive to the hospital, Pitzarella began moving his arms and legs.
“I knew he was going to be OK when he was blinking his eyes and moving his arms,” Catto said. “He actually shook my hand before I put him in the helicopter. It was almost like a thank-you. It put a lot of things in perspective.”
This wasn’t his first heart attack, Pitzarella explained. He had one in 2010, and in 2009, he suffered 11 mini strokes. This time, doctors kept him sedated for four days, Sandy said.
When Pitzarella woke up in his hospital room, he couldn’t remember how he got there. He didn’t even remember being married, Sandy said. When she told him what happened, he first asked about his car.
“I thank God I didn’t wreck my car or hit anybody else,” Pitzarella said. “Somebody was with me that day, that’s for sure.”
Catto said that as a part-time medic with Ambulance & Chair, he doesn’t always receive a followup on how a patient is doing once care is transferred to the hospital. They did get feedback on Pitzarella, he said, due to the amount of effort, communication and interventions that went into saving his life, Catto said.
“We were doing interventions that have only been done a handful of times across the country,” he said, referring to the double sequential defibrillation. “This was a true success, and it was a team effort.”
Catto said the early CPR performed by bystanders, Johnson and DeAngelo, played a huge role in that success.
“Early CPR saved that man’s life that day,” he said.
Johnson also learned of Richard’s survival a few days later.
“He’s a very lucky man,” she said. “He has quite a guardian angel over top of him.”
DeAngelo was happy to learn a couple weeks later that the man who appeared to have died near his parking lot was actually sitting up in the hospital bed and improving.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I was very humbled by the whole experience. It’s important for people to know how to help in that type of situation and to get some minimal training. I think that everyone in our community needs to be responsible to step forward when someone needs help.”
Pitzarella spent about two weeks in the hospital and had a defibrillator and pacemaker put in his chest.
Last Saturday, he had the opportunity of a lifetime: to thank everyone who helped save his life.
“I thank God for everything, especially for these guys,” he said. “They did a wonderful job.”