No one was looking at him when Paul Coyne’s heart gave out on him a week ago in the middle of a soccer game.
Coyne, 49, was playing an 8:45 p.m. match at Kemp Field in Folsom.
He’d just been subbed back in after a breather and the ball was down at the other end of the long field.
“As I ran onto the field, I said, ‘I don’t feel too well,’ and that’s all I remember.
As in: That’s all he remembers between Oct. 27, when he collapsed, and Wednesday, when his head began to clear after surgery to implant a heart defibrillator.
“Today I feel great,” Coyne said Thursday. “According to my wife, yesterday and the day before I was pretty incoherent.”
That he’s alive at all is thanks to the fact that two of his Turn Verein soccer teammates – unbeknown to Coyne – were an emergency medical technician and a Mercy General Hospital cardiac rehab program director.
“None of them (his cardiac patients) ever collapsed on me in the middle of exercise,” said Ken Rogaski, the rehab coordinator, who did chest compressions to keep Coyne’s heart going until Folsom Fire Department paramedics arrived.
“I’m so glad he said something,” said Rogaski. “Everyone was looking in the exact opposite direction.”
Rogaski’s quick actions make Coyne a rarity, a person who had a heart attack outside the hospital and survived.
“Their chances of surviving are less than 5 percent,” said Bryan Gardner, a spokesman for Mercy Hospitals.
Rogaski and another team member heard Coyne breathing, but found his pulse was irregular and weak.
Rogaski, trained in an advanced version of CPR, started the compressions.
Coyne was taken to Mercy Folsom where he was stabilized and his body cooled – a method used in recent years to give the body’s organs a better chance of surviving after severe cardiac problems.
Then he was transferred to Mercy General in Sacramento for surgery to install a cardioverter-defibrillator.
His family lives in Placerville, but his wife, Marjorie, and 18-year-old daughter Paris had to rush back from Mexico City, where Paris had a modeling job. He also has a son, John, 16.
Coyne thought he was in good shape, playing soccer three or four times a week.
His wife reminded him, “You have a history of passing out.” He would get light-headed getting up from bed.
“Not always,” Coyne said, knowing he should’ve had it checked out before.
His teammates learned something from the incident, too. The day after the attack, Rogaski ran into another teammate at a youth soccer game.
“He had already enrolled in CPR training,” Rogaski said.
“They just need to know how to do that,” Gardner said.
“Actually, I’m going to have to take a CPR class,” Coyne said.
He hopes to be back at work in a week or so. “I’m a graphic designer. It doesn’t take much to sit down and open a computer.” His online profile at his firm describes him as a “soccer fiend.”
He feels blessed to be doing anything.
“I wouldn’t be here if Ken wasn’t on our team,” he said. “I’d be dead.”
