MALLIE, Ky. – Nelly Blair has little memory of the morning she almost died.

 

The 76-year-old Mallie, Ky., woman had recently begun physical therapy at home to help regain strength and mobility after breaking her left femur and knee in a fall.

She remembers sitting on the edge of her bed while Kendra Tolliver, a physical therapy assistant with Hazard ARH Home Health, helped her through treatment.

“But then I blacked out and don’t remember anything until I came to in an ambulance,” Blair said.

Tolliver, however, remembers the rest quite vividly.

“We were doing stretches, and she was tolerating it pretty well, but I always ask patients throughout, ‘Are you doing OK?’ just to make sure,” she recalled.

Blair seemed fine, initially, but during the next exercise, Tolliver said she noticed a change in her complexion.

“So, I asked her again if she was OK,” she said. “But this time she put her hands on her face, said ‘I don’t know,’ and then she just slumped forward.”

Tolliver immediately pushed Blair safely back onto the bed and yelled for her caregiver to come to the room.

“Nelly was gasping for air at that point and making gurgling sounds,” she said. “I was checking for her heart rate, but I was in such a panic I didn’t know if I was feeling her own heart or mine, but the caregiver said she couldn’t find her pulse at all.”

Within seconds, Tolliver said she called 911, handed the phone to Blair’s caregiver and began CPR.

By then, Blair’s husband Sam was standing nearby. Though Sam, who is blind, was unable to see the emergency unfolding in front of him, he began pleading for his wife to wake up.

“He kept saying, ‘Nelly, come back to me honey. Come back,’” Tolliver recalled. “It broke my heart.”

As Tolliver administered CPR, she kept a hopeful eye on a pulse oximeter she had placed on Blair’s hand.

Finally, after minutes that seemed like hours, a number registered.

“The first reading I got was 57, but then it went all the way up to 187,” Tolliver recalled. “Then it started coming back down into the 80s.”

Thirty minutes elapsed between the 911 call and the ambulance arrival. By that time, Blair was able to nod her head in response to questions.

At Hazard ARH Regional Medical Center, Blair, who had blood clots in each lung, was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism.

“I had never had any heart trouble and was in pretty good shape before the fall,” Blair said. “But things sort of snowballed from there and the blood clots caused the heart attack.”

After the clots were removed, she spent four days in the ICU before she returned home.

“I’m on blood thinners and a few other things now, but it’s going really good,” she said.

And though she knows what happened that day, she said she still has a difficult time wrapping her brain around it.

“I have no memory of it, but I know I came close to death,” she said. “I just think it’s miraculous that Kendra was right there with me to save me.”

After a few stops and starts due to heart rate irregularity, Blair returned to home therapy.

She said she struggled with the right words to say when Tolliver knocked on her door to resume treatment.

“What can you say to a person who has helped save your life,” she said. “There aren’t enough words, so I just expressed how thankful I am. I told her I was sure it was something she didn’t expect that day.”

Though the experience is something Tolliver said she hopes to never relive, she said she is thankful she was there when Blair needed her the most.

“I’m CPR certified as part of my job, but it wasn’t something I have had to do before,” she said. “It wasn’t something I ever dreamed I would have to do – and I hope I never have to do it again – but I’m very grateful I was there.”

Blair expressed her appreciation for ARH Home Health and Tolliver in particular. And though the provider/patient relationship typically ends upon the completion of therapy, both women said that won’t be the case for them.

“I feel like I’m part of the family now,” Tolliver said. “It’s very special.”

Blair agreed, adding, “I feel very close to Kendra. She’s wonderful. She helped give me a second chance at life and I really feel like it was a miracle.”

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