Local Ambulance Crew Saves Damariscotta Man’s Life

A Damariscotta man credits the swift response of a Central Lincoln County Ambulance crew with saving his life Nov. 6.

“I was probably within minutes of death,” Vic Macomber said in a Dec. 3 interview.

Macomber, at 83, is serious about physical fitness. He jogs, plays golf and skis in season, and he plays tennis at the Central Lincoln County YMCA three times a week, all year long.

He was playing doubles at the YMCA the morning of Nov. 6 when he began to feel faint.

He checked his own pulse and found a rapid, weak heartbeat. He stretched out on a bench to rest in hopes he would start to feel better, but one of his fellow tennis players called 9-1-1.

Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service Chief Warren Waltz was on duty for the 10:01 a.m. call. The veteran paramedic and his team were at the YMCA by 10:03 a.m. and with Macomber at the tennis courts a minute later.

Macomber, by this time, “was really gray,” Waltz said. He had no pulse in his wrists and a “very weak” pulse in his neck, “severe” signs that indicate a weak heartbeat, Waltz said. Macomber was still able to talk, albeit in a mumble.

The team quickly diagnosed the problem – a lethal heart rhythm, also known as ventricular tachycardia.

The condition “is really serious” because only part of the heart continues to beat, and the beat is “more of a quiver or a half-baked squeeze, so it’s not really pumping the blood enough to do you much good,” Waltz said.

“You really have a matter of minutes,” Waltz said.

The ambulance team medicated Macomber and prepared to shock his heart with an automated external defibrillator. The goal is for the heart to stop and restart itself, “almost like a computer reboot,” Waltz said.

Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service members are (from left) Chief Warren Waltz, EMT Greg Feltis, paramedic Toby Hollis and EMT Nick Bryant at the ambulance station in Damariscotta Tuesday, Dec. 3. A Damariscotta man credits the ambulance crew with saving his life Nov. 6. Paramedic Craig Gleason was also on the call. (J.W. Oliver photo)

Macomber remembers everything. “They told me it would be like somebody kicking me in the chest, but they hoped that it would straighten out the heart, and that’s exactly what happened,” he said.

His heart returned to a normal rhythm, Waltz said, and the relief showed on his face.

“Almost immediately I started feeling fine,” Macomber said. “I was actually ready to get up and go home, but they persuaded me to go in the ambulance with them to the emergency room and let a physician have a go at me.”

An ambulance transported Macomber to the Miles campus of LincolnHealth, where Dr. Sandra Stevens performed some preliminary tests and referred Macomber to Maine Medical Center in Portland for further evaluation.

Macomber would remain at Maine Medical Center for a week, undergoing a series of tests at the hands of a team of cardiologists.

The doctors were eventually able to re-create the episode at the YMCA – to induce the lethal heart rhythm and restart the heart.

“I thought that was remarkable, but I was unconscious while this was going on,” Macomber said.

The doctors could not determine a specific cause for the trouble, but were able to settle on a solution. The Tuesday after the episode, Macomber underwent surgery to implant a cardioverter defibrillator in the left side of his chest, below his collarbone.

The device will monitor the heart and automatically deliver either “a gentle nudge” or “the big shock” if Macomber experiences the same malfunction, he said.

An auxiliary device will send daily reports to the manufacturer. Any unusual activity, like a shock, will trigger notification of Macomber’s cardiologist.

A week after his near-death experience, Macomber returned home to Damariscotta, where he lives at Schooner Cove with his wife, Mary Ellen.

He will need a doctor to sign off before he can drive again. He also brought instructions to wait a month before vigorous exercise. In place of his usual routine, he began to walk at least a mile every day.

He has since returned to the tennis court, where he plans to swing his racket gently as he continues to heal from the surgery.

Macomber and a group of friends meet at Sunday River every Superbowl Sunday and ski for a few days. Macomber does not intend to miss the annual event. He plans to resume jogging next year, or maybe opt for swimming instead.

A U.S. Air Force veteran who survived 219 combat missions as an F-100 pilot in Vietnam, he volunteers as an airplane mechanic at the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum. He recently retired from solo flight, but plans to continue to fly with a co-pilot.

The decision to give up flying alone was a timely one, he said.

“This could have happened if I had been alone in an airplane, and I may not have been able to get it on the ground,” Macomber said.

Macomber did not realize until his hospital stay how close he came to dying a month ago.

“I learned, while I was there, that I was probably going to die very soon, on the tennis court, if the ambulance and the people that operate it didn’t show up,” Macomber said. “They saved my life.”

He said he feels “a deep sense of gratitude” for the response of the ambulance crews.

The experience was rewarding for the crews, too – Waltz, paramedics Craig Gleason and Toby Hollis and EMTs Nick Bryant and Greg Feltis.

For Waltz, the chance to see his team “come together and work flawlessly” reinforces his pride in the unit. The outcome for Macomber, however, is the real reward.

Macomber “came in and thanked us a couple weeks later,” Waltz said. “It sounds a little hokey, a little dramatic and theatrical, (to say) we actually saved a life, but for all intents and purposes, we really did.”