On Thanksgiving evening last year, after returning home from a nice holiday dinner with friends, Craig resident Dave Johannes began to feel chest pains. He was watching TV with his wife, Tammie. He used his home blood pressure monitor to get a reading. It was high.

Dave caught Tammie’s eye and said, “We’d better go to the hospital.”

They drove the five minutes to the emergency room at The Memorial Hospital, where Dave had to be rushed inside in a wheelchair because he couldn’t walk. The ER physician and team did some rapid testing and determined that Dave was indeed experiencing a myocardial infarction.

“You’re having a massive heart attack,” the doctor told Dave.

And that’s when Dave’s heart stopped beating.

“I flatlined,” he said. “They had to shock me four or five times, but they got me back.”

The MRH ER team had already called for a medical helicopter, so shortly after Dave regained consciousness, he was lifted into the chopper and flown to Valley View Hospital, in Glenwood Springs, where he was taken immediately to the cardiac catheterization lab. There, cardiologists found an almost complete blockage in one of his main coronary arteries. They opened it with a balloon and stent.

Dave was cared for at Valley View for a few days then returned home. He completed a three- month, outpatient cardiac rehab program then returned to the home treadmill regimen he’d been following in the months leading up to his heart attack—three miles a day.

In the past, Dave has sometimes driven to the Steamboat or Meeker hospital and clinic for healthcare, but now he understands that the ER care at MRH is high-quality. He also knows that if he hadn’t gone straight to MRH that fateful night, he wouldn’t be here to tell this tale.

“The people and care at MRH were excellent,” he said. “If MRH hadn’t been here, I would be dead.”

Naturally, the heart attack was scary for Dave, but on the flight to Glenwood, he had a spiritual experience . “I had a profound moment with God in that helicopter,” he said. “I didn’t see a tunnel and light, but I felt him grab hold of my arm and tell me that it wasn’t time for me to go
to heaven yet. I felt a sense of overwhelming peace and calm.”

Today Dave, who at age 66 is retired, is back to his normal activities, like tending his 33-acre property and trout fishing. He and Tammie hope to do some elk, deer, and antelope hunting this fall. If you see him on his riding mower this summer, keeping that expansive lawn tidy, give
him a wave. He’s happy to be here.