Tarmey won't let 'sudden death' stop him

By Maureen Mullen

Item Sports Editor

Mark Tarmey went back to work last week.

As simple and mundane as that statement may be, on July 13 it was not a given that the Marblehead High School athletic director would return to work – or anything else.

“I’m a very lucky man,” Tarmey said. “Very, very fortunate to be able to just to be here.”

On that Sunday in July, Tarmey went out for his regular five-mile run. For some reason, though – he’s still not sure why – he went at 8 a.m., two hours later than his regular weekend routine. And that might be what saved his life.

About a mile into his run, on a wooded path off West Shore Drive in Marblehead, Tarmey, the avid runner, suffered a cardiac arrest.

“Which is sudden death,” he said.

“I don’t remember anything about it. I don’t remember anything for the preceding three or four days. It’s all wiped out…And to the best of the doctors’ knowledge, I may have been clinically dead for 10 minutes or so, which is a long time.”

Tarmey, 55, had never had heart problems. He ran every day, ate right, kept his weight in check. But, there is a family history. His father died at the age of 47.

Passersby found Tarmey lying unconscious on the path.

“Kerry Phelan, who is on the track team at Merrimack College, was out for her Sunday morning long run. She came upon me,” Tarmey said. “Chuck Becker, who happens to be one of my neighbors, came upon me at the same time. They immediately dialed 911, and as I understand it the 911 operator asked them if they were proficient in CPR…The dispatcher told one of them to run out to the street and see if they could flag somebody down…And the guy they flagged down is a guy I know very well, Dave Donahue.”

“I was in such bad shape he didn’t even recognize me and he knows me very, very well.”

The trio performed CPR on Tarmey, keeping him “viable,” as he put it, until EMTs arrived and took over.

“The EMTs weren’t sure they were going to get me back, and there were discussions about that, I guess,” he said. “They got me to the hospital. They had lost me and they got me back in the ambulance. And then in the hospital there was some discussion about whether or not to just let me go. They weren’t sure they could really get me back. And I was in a coma for a several days, and during the coma, things were not too good, but then I came out of it. I came out of it.”

Tarmey estimates his chances of surviving such a traumatic event were minimal.

“If you were to go down with a cardiac arrest right now and the person next to you had a telephone and called 911 immediately and the other person started CPR and was competent in CPR, you would have a nine percent chance of getting to the hospital,” he said. “And then once you got to the hospital, you would have a 40 percent chance of getting out of the hospital. So 40 percent of nine percent is about 3.5 percent. And mine was even less than that. Very few people survive a cardiac arrest.

“I was not attended to immediately. I was laying on the side of a wooded path. I was done. I was dead. They may feel that by being in good shape and being in good health was something that allowed me to get through that.”

When Tarmey came out of the coma, he underwent two surgeries – a quadruple bypass, “which was very painful, very difficult,” and a procedure to place an ICD – an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, used to prevent cardiac arrests in high-risk patients – in his chest.

Tarmey was in the hospital into August and began a cardiac rehab program in September. He went back to work Jan. 5 and is working a modified schedule now. He hasn’t been able to watch his student-athletes, and he’s turned over some of his duties to others, including Patricia Magee, Andrew O’Neill, Alex Kulevich, Tom Roundy.

“That’s been a big help,” he said. “Because I’m just not ready yet. I’m trying to get a handle on making sure the winter schedules are up to date and make sure we get the spring schedules squared away. So I’m being, I think, productive in the six hours I’m here a day. But six hours is enough for now.”

There are some things he can no longer do. He couldn’t drive until yesterday, six months from the day of his cardiac arrest. He can’t shovel snow or mow the lawn. No heavy lifting.

He has restrictions on what he can do with his left arm, the side with the ICD.

“But I can get out and walk,” he said. “Running, I’m not going to see myself running. I could eventually get myself back, but who knows. But right now that’s the last thing from my mind.”

He believes there is a reason he survived such a catastrophic event.

“My whole thing is, obviously as a person of faith, I was put back on this earth for some reason,” he said. “And not to get too sappy or corny, but everybody I meet and everybody I talk to, I just can’t speak enough about CPR and CPR training.

“Because if you think about that person that you care about the most – your father, your mother, your sister, your brother, your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend – whose that person that you couldn’t live without or wouldn’t want to live without? Well, that person could suffer a cardiac arrest today or tomorrow or next month and if you had CPR training, you could possibly save them.

“CPR is the thing I would like to talk about, the CPR, the training and the fabulous job the doctors and nurses and therapists and EMTs did.”

The athletic director has a new perspective on what constitutes a hero.

“We sometimes talk about heroes as people who win games and lose games, who have won 500 games or whatever. But that was some God-given talent,” he said. “But these people saved my life and are just unbelievable heroes to me. Unbelievable.

“And my doctors say that my 3.5 percent was the chance of survival. My percent was one percent. I’m the statistic. I’m not supposed to be here. So that’s kind of cool. I’m going to enjoy every day.”

Maureen Mullen can be reached at mmullen@itemlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MaureenAMullen.

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