Just seconds before death from cardiac arrest, a patient from St. Louis miraculously recovers

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (First Alert 4) – Just seconds before his death, a local man who nearly died of cardiac arrest vowed to give back two years later.

Tony Meneses is a first-generation Filipino-American who spent most of his adult life in St. Louis working in the IT industry before retiring.

He and his wife of nearly five years, Paula Howard, live south of St. Louis City, but they have made a habit of traveling the world together. When he's not traveling, you'll likely find Meneses on his bike, participating in rides and races around the area.

His healthy lifestyle made his ordeal even more unexpected. During a party in 2022, he collapsed and eventually suffered a cardiac arrest.

“I was fine, I could walk around,” Meneses said. “Then suddenly I was exhausted. I tried to get to my chair and before I knew it, I had collapsed.”

Meneses was seconds away from death. He was taken to the nearby Mercy Hospital emergency room, where doctors tried in vain to resuscitate him for over an hour.

After several unsuccessful resuscitation attempts, doctors told Howard to say her final goodbye. As she did so, doctors began disconnecting Meneses from the various machines when something happened like something out of a movie.

“I touched his heart and someone screamed, 'I have a pulse! I have a pulse!'” Howard recalls. “Everyone rushed back and started working on him again. They were able to stabilize him. He came back.”

That fateful moment was just the beginning of Meneses' two-year recovery. After being taken to Barnes Jewish Hospital for treatment, he spent the next few weeks in an induced coma. Doctors and his family were still unsure if he would ever be his old self again.

“They told him, 'Tony, you need to shake your wife's hand.' But then nothing happened until one day he did it,” Howard said.

They determined that Meneses had suffered cardiogenic shock, a rare heart condition that leads to death in about 90% of cases. Dr. Joel Schilling, MD, PhD, was part of Meneses' care team at BJC.

“Many people who have a blocked artery in the same place as him that supplies a large part of the heart don't even make it to the hospital,” said Dr. Schilling.[If] If anything went wrong during these steps, his brain would have suffered irreversible damage.”

His condition was caused by ischemic cardiomyopathy, a more common form of heart disease that affects the heart's ability to pump enough blood throughout the body.

Doctors in St. Louis found Meneses a heart transplant at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. His family helped charter a private plane to ensure he could be safely transported to Mayo.

Having learned to walk, eat and drink again, Meneses is now able to lead a normal life almost two years after his collapse. He can only compare his ordeal to something out of a Hollywood movie and is grateful to the numerous doctors in all three hospitals for saving him.

“It's like 'Saving Private Ryan,'” Meneses said. “They had teams set up that would alternate morning and evening runs.”

Meneses says the efforts to save him were priceless, something he appreciates even more because several of his family members have worked in the medical field for a time.

This is one of the reasons he decided to share this story now. He hopes it inspires others to become doctors and nurses, to help others and save more lives. In the future, he wants to talk to young people about the importance of doctors and maintaining a healthy heart.

Dr. Schilling says exercise and a healthy diet are two common ways to promote heart health. But he adds that severe symptoms, similar to Meneses' case, can come on suddenly.

He recommends that if you experience multiple symptoms such as chest pain, fatigue, nausea or extreme shortness of breath, you should see a doctor as soon as possible or, in severe cases, go to the emergency room.

Meneses and Howard plan to return to their normal travel habits while enjoying time with their siblings and children.

All rights reserved.