Local nurse stopped to help a stranger

Jen Stowers recalls minute details of the day Chris Cass doesn’t remember at all.

Mid-afternoon on Monday, June 7, about three-fourths of a mile into her bike ride on the Blackwater Creek Trail, Stowers saved Cass’ life.

“I was really tired. I hadn’t slept much, and I don’t know what made me decide to go for a bike ride,” Stowers said. “I kept trying to talk myself out of it.”

Cass, who doesn’t remember even starting his regular jog, is glad she didn’t.

“I have absolutely no recollection,” he said of that day. “I just woke up in the hospital and had tubes sticking out of everywhere.”

Bit by bit, Cass was told the pieces of the story — how he nearly died of a massive heart attack and how Stowers, a nurse in the Lynchburg General Hospital emergency room, gave him life-saving CPR for 20 minutes.

Stowers noticed a few people gathered around something off of the trail.

“I got (closer) and I saw that there was a man down on the ground,” she said.

A passerby called 911. From there, her nurse’s instincts kicked in.

“I put one hand on his neck and one hand on his thigh and was feeling for a pulse, and he didn’t have one,” Stowers said.

For the next 20 minutes, at times assisted by others who happened upon the scene, Stowers administered rescue breaths and chest compressions to Cass, who didn’t regain a pulse until emergency crews arrived.

“She just jumped right in. I was very lucky,” Cass said. “I know doing CPR is exhausting … That’s an intense physical act to be performing for 20 minutes.”

Stowers said when EMS crews arrived, they shocked Cass multiple times on the way back to Lynchburg General Hospital, and at some point between there and the trail, he regained a pulse.

She praised the coordination between hospital staff, emergency services and the doctors.

“You’ve just never seen the teamwork like you see in health care,” she said, adding she’s particularly amazed by how well the process is streamlined in Lynchburg.

“I definitely didn’t do it alone,” she said, giving credit to the people that helped her on the trail, the EMS workers and the emergency room workers. “Lynchburg is so lucky to have the heart people that we have.”

She added “if you’re going to have a heart attack anywhere in this country …,” trailing off.

Cass, 47, said the experience served as a wake-up call. Even though he has always been active, and swore off meat at age 19, he hadn’t been eating a healthy diet, particularly because of his diabetes.

“I was feeling good. I was active. I worked out,” he said. “It caught up with me.”

Stowers said considering Cass’ condition, and not knowing how long he had been down before she encountered him, she didn’t expect what she encountered when she headed to work that night.

“Never in my lifetime did I imagine to walk into the room and see that man laying there looking up at the ceiling with his eyes open, awake and alive,” she said.

Of all the medical training she went through in school, Stowers said, the CPR class was the easiest.

“Five years ago, if you would have told me that I would be doing CPR on a total stranger in the middle of the woods, I would have never ever believed you,” she said.

“It doesn’t take a lot to learn how to do CPR, but what you can do with it is incredible.”

Cass said his near-death helped him to see a side of people that counteracts all the negative reports he constantly hears.

“I’ll tell you, a lot of people put in a lot of effort to keep me alive,” he said. “Just the good will of people, it’s very reassuring, life-affirming.”

And from Cass, only two words came to mind.

“Thank you. Really, it’s just that simple. Thank you.”

Stowers said she was just grateful that she was where she was when she was.

“Next to the birth of my daughter, it was the best day of my life. Hands down.”