Langdon Cassidy woke up on Mother’s Day, got dressed, went to church and then had breakfast. He remembers that it had been a good day with no signs of the emergency he was about to face.
Hours after his post-church meal, League City EMS responded to Langdon’s home where they found his wife Jessica Cassidy performing CPR on him. “I thought he was choking at first,” she said. Turns out that Langdon, 58, was having a heart attack and that 100 percent of one of his arteries was blocked.
CPR was in progress as the League City EMS brought him to the UTMB Clear Lake Campus Hospital, and Cassidy obtained a return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) prior to arriving at the hospital. Once he got there, he was intubated then quickly taken to the cath lab. Despite having complete blockage of his left anterior descending artery (LAD), Cassidy recovered.
On the Friday before Father’s Day, Langdon returned to the emergency room at the Clear Lake hospital to thank the medics, nurses, technicians and doctors who saved his life. He wrote personal letters to many of them, and he brought cookies, fruit and cheese for them to enjoy.
“Thank you,” he said many times over.
It was a special event because EMS crews don’t always know the outcomes for patients they take to the ER.
“Most of the time, unless the hospital contacts us, we don’t know what happened,” said Shawn Doyle, a paramedic with the League City Fire Department. “To find out what happened to him was phenomenal.
“It’s very unusual to have CPR performed, then a defibrillator, and then he woke up,” Doyle said. “It’s very rare.”
Cassidy hugged a lot of people at the June 17 reunion. He teared up as he expressed gratitude and even joked about what happened.
Pointing to his chest where a mechanical compression device left a circular mark, he declared “I’m Ironman, now.”
Just like the medics and the nurses, Cassidy also wanted to understand what happened and who saved him.
“I want to fill in the blanks,” Cassidy said. His memory of what happened to him on Mother’s Day was unclear.
He also caught up with the nurses who cared for him and with Dr. Nathanael Campbell, who was working in the emergency room when Cassidy arrived.
Everyone asked how he was feeling.
“I don’t walk around scared,” Cassidy said. “I thank God and the team here that put me back together.”