From The Heart
“A little over a year ago, we were still living in Rockland County [NY], and my neighbor, Lisa Ross, dropped dead. She literally was playing Play-Doh with her children and just collapsed. Thank God her husband, a New York City fireman, was home. He works crazy hours and he’s also a contractor, so he’s not home a lot. And they have a huge house, so he could have been up in the shower and not heard anything. But he happened to be in the room at the exact time that it happened. He called my husband, Mike [McMahon], right away, and Mike went over and they performed CPR on her. She wasn’t alive — I mean, she had no pulse, but they kept oxygen going through her body until the EMTs came and shocked her three times to get a pulse. Basically, there was a mischarge in the message from her brain to her heart and her heart just stopped. It’s a freak thing; it never would have shown up on any kind of EKG unless it happened at the exact moment she was getting it. It’s crazy — she’s 38 years old, with two babies.”Luckily, all the stars aligned and the right people were there at the right time. My husband did compressions and her husband was breathing for her. Her daughter never would have known to dial 911, even though she’s 4. She just freaked out when it happened. My friend doesn’t remember it. The last memory she has is seeing a movie that I did when I was 12, which was on TV two days before this happened! She doesn’t remember being in ICU. She was there six days, in a coma for three. And they didn’t know whether she had severe brain damage or not. But she would watch AS THE WORLD TURNS in her room and kind of [wake up] and look at me and tell her friends that I played a ‘tarty girl,’ which is good because it meant that she was remembering something. It was very weird, because people who have amnesia don’t have it like they do on soap operas. They don’t know to be upset that they can’t remember their own children. They don’t know to be sad; they don’t miss something they don’t know. She had no sadness about it. It was such an interesting thing to watch as an actress. Thankfully, she’s fine now. She has a defibrillator in her heart in case it ever happens again.”Lisa was the ‘Save of the Year’ for the American Heart Association and is a ‘Celebration of Life’ honoree at the [Douglas Cole-Hatchard Heart Walk] at Rockland Community College Fieldhouse on May 2. I’m going with my family, and Kelley [Menighan Hensley, Emily] will be there, and I’m trying to get Michael Park [Jack] to come, too, to kind of support her and get more awareness to taking care of yourself. Because you just never know. She’s a dear friend, and it’s a relief to have her with us. So, we’re going out and hopefully we’ll get a nice day, bring the kids and raise some money.”
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