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Heart attack spurs Villa Park couple's hospital wedding

If Tom King and Alex Dolezal followed one of those detail-obsessed wedding-planning calendars, they would know that nowhere, on any checklist, does it say this: Have heart attack.

But if King and Dolezal followed one of those guides, they wouldn't have tied the knot Saturday in the chapel at Elmhurst Hospital, just three days after King suffered a heart attack in the emergency room.

King, 68, of Villa Park, had proposed to his longtime girlfriend before.

Dolezal, 58, had put him off, despite the loving relationship the two sailing enthusiasts have shared for five years and the life they've built together.

"She was looking for something really romantic, I guess. She wasn't quite ready to sign off on the whole deal," King said. "So then the heart attack came and it was sort of a good reality check for her."

Dolezal says the moment of truth came when she was in the emergency room with King as the chest pain he'd been feeling the night of June 7 ("like I had two elephants sitting on my chest," he says) turned into full cardiac arrest. As doctors and nurses used a defibrillator to shock it back into rhythm, they ushered Dolezal into another room.

"It's like in the movies when all the sudden his eyes kind of rolled back and all the beepers went off on all the machines," Dolezal said. "He scared the heck out of me."

A half hour later, when a revived King was having surgery under DuPage Medical Group cardiologist Dr. Andrew Rauh, the chaos of the heart attack died down and Dolezal had a chance to think, she said. As Rauh cleared a 100 percent blockage of the main artery to King's heart using a balloon and a stent, Dolezal pondered the future she imagined with King and how close it came to vanishing away.

"I figured it's time to stop procrastinating," she said.

From then on, it was a wedding-planning frenzy - peppered with the early days of heart attack recovery.

As doctors helped King get out of bed and walk, his adult daughters contacted the DuPage County clerk's office and scrambled a couple of employees out to the hospital to swear in Dolezal and King, as is required to apply for a marriage license.

License received, the couple then was required by the county to wait 24 hours - which was fortunate timing because it allowed them to easily find an officiant in Dolezal's sister, Carol Dolezal, a hospice chaplain in California.

Carol already had a trip to Chicago booked starting June 8 to pick up her daughter after her first year at Northwestern University. As she boarded her plane, Carol said, she learned the hospital chaplain's office didn't have anyone available Saturday to conduct her sister's spur-of-the-moment nuptials, so she agreed to run the ceremony, thinking "something divine has happened."

She'd already ordered Dolezal a couple of dress options on one-day shipping so she could deliver them straight from her daughter's dorm to her sister at King's bedside in the hospital, and now Carol set about writing the short, sailing-inspired ceremony.

Medically, there was nothing preventing the post-heart attack King from being wheeled down to the chapel, heart monitor in tow, to participate in his own wedding, Rauh said. Cardiologists like to get heart attack patients up and moving, in fact, to begin their rehabilitation.

So wearing a new ocean blue polo and sweatpants from a nearby Walmart, King wed Dolezal, clad in a flowing, navy blue gown like the depths of Lake Michigan.

The hospital cafeteria provided cake and coffee. A few nurses came down to watch King's health and attend the ceremony. A few relatives and friends from Dolezal's work made it to the afternoon ceremony as well.

"I don't know how things could have fallen together any better," she said.

As the officiant, Dolezal's sister reminded the bride and groom of the value of the commitment they were professing.

"In the end, the only thing you can take with you for the journey is love," she said.

Dolezal, getting married for the first time, jokingly said she's noticed the permanence of the vows.

"We have to stay and work through any disagreements," she said.

Together, Dolezal and King will embark on King's heart attack recovery plan, which includes 12 weeks of cardiac rehabilitation exercise and classes and lifestyle changes to cut out smoking, decrease caffeine and eat more healthfully. With such big changes ahead, the hospital setting of the couple's impromptu wedding seems a fitting reinforcement of the vow about sickness and health, their officiant said.

"They have an opportunity to work toward health together and fend off the sickness, we pray," Carol Dolezal said, "for a while longer."

About 15 people, including relatives, friends and hospital employee, s attended the wedding June 10 of Alex Dolezal and Tom King in the chapel at Elmhurst Hospital. The two tied the knot three days after King suffered a heart attack and "scared the heck out of" Dolezal, who had previously been putting off his proposals to get married. Courtesy of Carol Dolezal
Staff members from the DuPage County Clerk's office came to Elmhurst Hospital to swear in Alex Dolezal and Tom King, who wanted to get married as soon as they could after King suffered a heart attack June 7 at Elmhurst Hospital. The couple tied the knot June 10 in the hospital's chapel. Courtesy of Alex Dolezal
Tom King, 68, of Villa Park, married his longtime girlfriend, Alex Dolezal, 58, during a ceremony Saturday in the chapel at Elmhurst Hospital, where he suffered a heart attack four days earlier. Courtesy of Alex Dolezal
Tom King and Alex Dolezal, early on in their relationship, came in fourth place in their division of the Chicago Yacht Club's Race to Mackinac in 2012. The couple, married three days after King's heart attack June 7 at Elmhurst Hospital, enjoys sailing and being on the water. Courtesy of Alex Dolezal
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