Reprinted from a Las Vegas Sun 5/31/22 article:

Jean Dahlberg doesn’t remember much about going into cardiac arrest and almost dying.

Dahlberg, 64, was at Russell Sports Complex watching her twin 8-year-old granddaughters, Gwen and Kaylee Dahlberg, wrap up their soccer match, flanked alongside her mother, Carol Porreca, son Dwayne Dahlberg and his wife, Kara Dahlberg. The kids were high-fiving their opponents while parents and spectators were packing up lawn chairs and heading to the parking lot. 

That’s when things start to get fuzzy.

“It would have been terrible, all those kids seeing me dead,” Jean Dahlberg said. “I remember like two seconds of being in the ambulance, but I didn’t know what was going on. And the next thing I know I was in the hospital and in a lot of pain.”

She lost consciousness when standing up from her chair, with her head tilted backward, and her eyes rolled back. Every breath she took from then on sounded like it might be her last, Dwayne Dahlberg said.
“When my mom went unresponsive, I started smacking her face a little bit trying to wake her up,” he said. “I tried to get a pulse from her neck and I wasn’t reading anything. At that point, I started screaming for somebody to help me get her out of her chair and begin CPR.”

“She just wasn’t even there anymore. It was terrifying.”

Jean lost consciousness and went into cardiac arrest while also suffering a six-inch dissection in her descending thoracic aorta — a tear in one of the main arteries that carries blood to and from the heart, her family said.

Either of those ailments alone can be fatal if left untreated for long enough, and both require immediate medical attention to avoid a long list of complications. If you’re fortunate enough to survive.

Luckily for Jean, she couldn’t have been in a much better place at the March 19 game. One of her granddaughter’s coaches, Brandon Alvarado, is a Metro Police officer and his brother-in-law, Charles Arbernathy, is a Nevada State Police trooper. On top of that, nurse Amanda Parks had seen the commotion from an adjacent field and sprinted her way across to see how she could help.

“Seriously, (she was) just bolting across the soccer field and she has a baby just strapped to her chest,” said Kara Dahlberg.

Once that trio saw what was going on, they sprang into action until an ambulance and fire units could arrive. Parks made sure Jean was correctly in the recovery position and checked for a pulse, while Abernathy did chest compressions and Alvarado monitored her breathing.

“This was my second or third time in 16 years of being a cop doing this,” Abernathy said of performing CPR. “It was a team effort, from the person who dialed 911, to my wife and Stephanie (Alvarado’s wife and fellow coach) shielding the kids from the scene, to somebody running out there to find the fire truck once it came.

“It was a good collective of humanity right there.”

That bought enough time for Clark County Fire and Rescue and the Henderson Fire Department to arrive. Before they transported her to Henderson Hospital, they cut through her clothes to administer defibrillator shocks after she had flatlined three times, Dwayne Dahlberg said.

The Dahlbergs are admittedly not a very religious bunch, but whether it was divine intervention or a one-in-a-million stroke of luck, Jean’s health scare was a wakeup call for her and those who saw what happened, they said.

“The stars aligned for her to be at this location at this time for her to be alive today,” Dwayne Dahlberg said. “If this would have happened on the way to the game, it could have been my mom and my grandma dead. If it happened five minutes after, it could have been my mom and grandma driving home and they’re both dead from a car accident.”

She was hospitalized for three weeks before she returned home, family said. A few days after checking into the hospital, her oxygen levels plummeted and she was placed on a ventilator for about a week.

She also had a cracked sternum and six broken ribs. That’s the unfortunate byproduct of CPR.

“When you’re performing CPR and doing it the right way, those sorts of things are going to happen,” Alvarado said. “You’re going to crack ribs, you’re going to break sternums. It’s going to happen in order to get those good chest compressions to get that heart going and that blood flow going.”

Jean Dahlberg is still recovering and getting stronger every day, she said. The episode has bound her to a walker as she slowly relearns to find her stride. She moved in with Dwayne and Kara so they can assist with anything she may need.
The stress of it all forced her to retire from her work as a stenographer, a job she had for more than 25 years, she said. One of her biggest challenges now is adjusting to a new lifestyle and finding activities to occupy her time.

“I think this was a blessing in disguise,” Dwayne said. “She was working 15-hour days, and she was helping my sister, helping my niece, just one of those people who gives all and takes nothing.”

It’s also been a wakeup call for rest of the family. Dwayne says the ordeal prompted him to start seeing a cardiologist, and family friends have signed up nearly two dozen people for CPR classes.

Abernathy credits his former colleague, fallen NSP trooper Cliff Fontaine, who died last year from COVID-19 complications. Fontaine was one of the agency’s biggest advocates for fellow troopers to stay up on their CPR certification, Abernathy said.

For Parks, the whole episode felt surreal. Of course as a nurse, administering medical care is part of her job. But Parks herself had CPR done in October after she nearly drowned while on a couples trip in Mexico.

“Without that CPR, I wouldn’t be here,” Parks said. “So I’m forever grateful and just trying to fund my purpose in life and do whatever I can to help, because, clearly, I have a purpose.”

Jean says she’s always been a believer that everything happens for a reason. Now, with a new lease on life — and a lot more time on her hands — she’s ready to make every minute count.

“I’ve got some heroes and some angels looking over me,” she said.