Michael Johnston, a 1972 graduate of Wayland High School and retired Kenowa Hills High School history teacher, was back at the microphone on the “Cut to the Chase” local radio program Tuesday morning.
Johnston told host Jim Chase, colleagues and listeners about how he came back from an uncomfortably close brush with death on July 8, thanks to the heroic efforts of his wife and pickelball comrades.
Johnston underwent a quadruple by-pass procedure at Spectrum Hospital and spent two weeks there after suffering two heart attacks at the Providence CRC Church gym on 72nd Street while playing pickleball with friends. The gym is open to the public Monday mornings and afternoons for pickle ball.
“Five retirees and a huge community of pickle ball players overwhelmed me with their compassion, prayers and hope more than two weeks ago when I slumped over in a chair waiting for my next turn to play,” Johnson said. “Wife Jan, Tina, a retiree teacher (who knew CPR), Pamela who found me slumped over, Ellie, and unflappable 77-year-old Peggy went to work on my lifeless body. Peggy applied the defibrillator.”
Johnston only recently returned to the scene of his near-death experience.
“The defibrillator on the wall outside the gym! Hallway where the chairs were lined up on both walls and I was sitting,” he recalled. “Apparently my slumping body was laid on the hallway carpet outside the gym. Here five heroic women worked to revive my stopped heart.
“My wife blew air into my lungs, Tina pummeled my chest with CPR correctly done, Pamela sitting next to me, alerted everyone that I was not responding to being awoken as my body slumped backward with tongue hanging out, Ellie took my pulse, and Peggy, (an Elizabeth Warren look-a-like) applied the defibrillator shocks to my chest.
“My lifeless body, being shocked twice, arched into the air. The electrocution caused me to vomit. When my body was turned to the side, I vomited on the carpet.”
His wife told him she felt bad that we might have ruined the church gym’s carpet.
“We both looked down on it where I might have died. It now looked clean. Jan later remembered in the hazy fog of sheer panic that there was a narrow, heavy traffic walkway carpet over the one we were looking at. It was gone. I was still here.
An occasional guest for the weekly “Cut the Chase” radio program, he told listeners about his gratefulness and updated perspective on life.
“The doctor said pickleball, twice weekly stretching exercise classes, and using these to control Type II diabetes with diet only is very effective. I’m recovering much faster than those who haven’t had these wonderful benefits. So, no, PB did not contribute to my broken heart!”
Johnston, known in recent years for his political and union activism and a serious Ben Franklin impersonator, left Spectrum on his 66th birthday July 23.
“(There was) A steady stream of visiting nurses, occupational therapists and physical therapists,” he said. I owe my physical condition to my pickle ball friends forever.”