'I was dead. Because of her, now I'm not': He reunites with the nurse who saved his life

Up until Tuesday, Jack Wilson of Burlington had never laid eyes on the woman who saved his life eight weeks ago.

Wilson, 78, was at the outpatient lab at Advocate Sherman Hospital on July 19 when he suddenly went into cardiac arrest. A quick-acting pre-admissions nurse from across the hall restarted his heart.

“I was dead. Because of her, now I'm not,” Wilson said of the nurse whose intervention got his heart beating again while waiting for a rapid response team.

This week, he returned to the Elgin hospital to meet Bo Kielbus for the first time and thank her.

Wilson, who was going through cardiac rehab for a heart attack he suffered in May, had a couple of appointments that day on opposite sides of the hospital. He had walked a fair distance when he got to the outpatient lab for blood work and didn't see anyone at the desk.

“I said, 'Is anyone here?' and that's the last thing I remember until the next morning,” said Wilson, who had gone into cardiac arrest, fell to the floor and hit his head.

Kielbus, a registered nurse in pre-admission testing, was in her office across the hall when she heard the rapid response team called to the outpatient lab. Seconds later, she heard a woman, who turned out to be another patient, yelling out for help.

When Kielbus ran over to see what was going on, she found Wilson unresponsive on the floor. He was not breathing and had no pulse.

“I've been a nurse for way over 20 years,” she said. “So seeing a person on the floor like that should take less than 10 seconds to assess.”

Kielbus spent 20 years as a critical care nurse. But now she spends most of her time on a computer or phone processing incoming patients. And while she still trains to refresh skills like CPR every 90 days, it's a lot different on a mannequin than on a man twice her size who is on the floor bleeding from the head.

“We're all registered nurses. The expectancy is the same of all of us,” she said. “You see a patient on the floor, it's a call to action. Time is heart. Time is brain. Those first few moments are so crucial.”

According to the American Heart Association, immediate CPR can double or triple the chance of survival after cardiac arrest.

Kielbus said she thinks she was doing chest compressions for two to three minutes until the code team arrived and took over, intubating Wilson and whisking him to the emergency department.

How did she feel after such an unexpected adrenaline rush?

“I was tired. I was sweating. It's difficult,” she said. “I hope you never have to do CPR on a real human. It's hard. But it was very rewarding when I learned that Jack was doing well.”

Dr. John Corcoran, who treated Wilson in the emergency department, said that by starting CPR immediately, Kielbus saved Wilson's life.

“The second your heart stops beating like that, you're on the clock,” he said. “Your vital organs don't have oxygen. So any amount of time delayed can lead to permanent neurological or cardiac injury.”

Corcoran said he doesn't see cardiac arrest codes every day. So Kielbus' actions were even more commendable.

“She's not an emergency medicine nurse. So she probably wasn't expecting to have to do chest compressions or CPR that day. So that's even more impressive,” he said. “It can't be understated how great it was that she was able to act so quickly.”

Wilson knows he was lucky somebody with Kielbus' training was nearby.

“If it were anywhere else, I would have died for sure. No ifs, ands or buts,” he said. “Nobody would have gotten to me in time.

“Thank God she was there.”