STARKVILLE — Al Schmidt is still trying to forget May 12. It was a hot and sunny afternoon, typical for the opening day of the Southeastern Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships.
Seconds after a heat of the decathlons’ 400 meters, Schmidt, the director of Mississippi State University track and field, felt dizzy. A shortness of breath followed.
Still struggling to breathe, he scanned Spec Towns Track in Athens Ga., for MSU track coaches Steve Dudley and Houston Franks then walked toward them, holding a copper container with glycerine pills. He reached for Dudley where he collapsed, falling into Dudley’s arms, the beginning of his latest fight for his life.
Time, which track coaches constantly monitor, was in short supply.
By the time Dudley took the top off the pill bottle, Schmidt’s jaw had locked. So he rubbed the medicine on his gum line to get it in his bloodstream. It had no effect.
Scar tissue from a triple bypass surgery was causing an arrhythmia — an irregular heart beat — disrupting his heart’s normal functions, blocking blood from traveling throughout his body.
If not corrected, Schmidt’s heart would stop. His skin started to turn blue.
“I checked his pulse,” Dudley remembered. “It was a light pulse but not a good pulse.”
Shocked, athletes surrounded Schmidt. Dudley yelled for an ambulance and medical assistance. Dr. Donald Lazas, the father of a runner from the University of Arkansas, ran from his seat in the stands and performed CPR. Ron Courson, an athletic trainer at the University of Georgia, retrieved the on-site automated external defibrillator (AED).
Schmidt’s pulse returned after the defibrillator’s first administration, then faded. He flat-lined.
It was administered again. This time, his pulse returned and settled, allowing Schmidt’s heart to re-establish an effective rhythm.
Emergency medical support was still en route, but the entrance gate was closed. MSU freshman James Harris ran toward the gate and pushed it open as the ambulance arrived, saving four to five minutes it would have taken EMS personnel to enter the track through a different gate. With cardiac arrest, four to five minutes is long enough to suffer brain damage.
Schmidt, already the survivor of a heart attack in 1998, was now stable and communicating with EMS personnel. He was transported to Athens Regional Medical Center, where he received cardiac catheterization.
Before leaving Athens, Schmidt endured two surgeries — a second bypass surgery and a pacemaker and internal defibrillator installation.
Six weeks later, when MSU introduced new softball coach Vann Stuedeman, most of MSU’s coaches were on hand to welcome her.
Schmidt was there, too, showing no physical effects of open heart surgery. In fact, he told MSU Director of Athletics Scott Stricklin he walked two miles that day.
“To see him not just doing better but feeling good enough to come into work is great,” Stricklin said.
Moving on
Though he can’t recall the length of time that passed while he was in cardiac arrest, Schmidt understands the mechanics of what happened.
“It couldn’t have happened in a better place,” said Schmidt, who said he later learned Athens Regional Medical Center is the top cardiac facility in the area. “If this would have happened at the hotel or someplace else, I would have been a goner.”
Today, the only difference in his life is that he doesn’t run and feels minor chest pain near the surgical incision.
He walks with his wife, Jessie, in Humphrey Coliseum to maintain his cardiovascular regimen.
He doesn’t enjoy walking; he”s a runner, accustomed to logging four to five miles at a time. To Schmidt, walking takes more physical effort than running. After all, he’s run 84,000 miles since he started keeping a log during his freshman year of high school, dating back 44 years.
As mundane as walking is, it’ll have to do for now.
“We did two-and-a-half miles yesterday and the pain he’s still experiencing in his chest is probably because it’s still inflamed,” Jessie said. “I think once that subsides to a level where he can accommodate it he’ll get back to running.”
His pacemaker is set for a heart rate of 200, so doctors are comfortable he can return to running full time. The defibrillator in his chest will provide the electrical jolt needed if he goes into cardiac arrest again.
“They say it’ll feel like a mule kicked me in the chest,” Schmidt said.
AED awareness
MSU Director of Sports Medicine Mary McLendon said the incident heightened campus awareness of having defibrillators at the school’s sporting venues and training facilities. In fact, she recently had met with MSU football strength and conditioning coach Mat Balis about AED accessibility in the weight room.
Two days after Schmidt’s cardiac arrest, the athletic department added 11 AEDs to the six it already had.
Schmidt said he hopes to do public service announcements about the importance of having multiple AEDs in buildings and having staff trained to administer them.
“If there’s any message to come out of this, you’ve got to have this around,” he said. “Yesterday, a friend I’ve known for 25 years died (at) practice. Thank God for Georgia because within minutes they were able to get one and save my life.”
In recent years, there were two instances when an AED was administered to treat a fan or worker at Humphrey Coliseum. Still, there’s a balance between knowing overexertion could put more strain on his heart and continuing to exercise to maintain a strong fitness level.
For a lifelong runner, having two bypass surgeries since ’98 and two cardiac catheterizations since November can be difficult to accept.
“When you’ve heard the angel’s wings flapping, you think you’d worry about it,” Schmidt said, “but I got to forget the things that went on that day. Because I know physiology so well.
“Exercise has saved me.”
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