A second chance at life
Josh Klug
Merrill Fire Chief
When Glen Manthei was riding his motorcycle through Merrill on September 8th of last year, he never could have imagined how his day, and almost his life, would end.
While he was riding his Harley through town, he approached the intersection of County Road G and K. Glen went through the stoplights when a car pulled out in front of him striking his left side. Fortunately he wasn’t significantly injured in the accident, but when the Merrill ambulance showed up, they still assessed him for possible injuries. This happened around 6:30 PM on a Sunday.
“I’m fine, just upset” said Mr. Manthei during his interview with Merrill paramedics. After the evaluation, Glen had some left hip pain, but decided he didn’t want to go to a hospital and signed the medical release.
End of story, right? Well not quite.
Since the patient didn’t want to be transported by ambulance, the med crew returned to the station which was approximately 7 PM. Around 7:10, one of the police officers on-scene, was requesting an ambulance return to the scene.
“The last thing I remember was looking at the police officer’s boots and telling him to bring the ambulance back, I’m not feeling good,” Menthei explains.
When the ambulance returned, officers told the med crew that the patient was having some severe chest pain. Glen was placed in the back of the ambulance where the paramedics went back to assessing him. Now with the change to his conditions, they were looking at his heart. Glen’s vital signs were checked including a 12-lead EKG. The crew noted ST elevation on the 12-lead which can mean the patient is having a heart attack. Glen was then started on the standard treatment by paramedics for a STEMI or ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction. A third Merrill Fire Department paramedic arrived on-scene, due to Glen’s condition and the ambulance immediately responded to Aspirus Wausau Hospital. This is common when patients are having a possible STEMI because Wausau is the closest hospital that can handle this condition. According to Glen, he doesn’t remember any of this, but the ambulance report says, “the patient had the feeling of impending doom.”
While the ambulance was en route to Wausau, around the Brokaw area, Glen’s heart went into a pulseless arrhythmia which required the crew to defibrillate him. After the initial shock, paramedics started compressions. During the remainder of the transport, Mr. Manthei continued to receive Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) care from the Merrill Fire Department crew.
Upon arrival at the hospital, Glen had been successfully revived, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. The ambulance crew along with nurses and doctors rushed him into cardiac surgery. While in surgery, the cardiologist found his arteries to be 90% blocked. When the surgeon finished the repair, Glen was placed in a medically induced coma. He spent the next 5 days in that condition before he woke up. A week after he woke up, he was strong enough to be released from the hospital. He spent the next 2 months with his daughter in Wausau going through physical therapy and cardio rehab. The doctors told him that he was lucky to be alive since most patients in his condition die.
On August 7th of this year, Glen Manthei walked into the Merrill Fire Station.
He was looking for “the guys who saved my life.” One of those guys was Bryson Cruise who happened to be working the day Glen stopped in. Dylan Schielke, another one of the Merrill paramedics that treated Glen, was called and he joined Glen and Bryson at the station.
“I can’t thank you guys enough for what you did for me that day,” said a teary-eyed Mr. Manthei. “You saved my life.”
Bryson and Dylan along with others who were at the station shared stories with Glen about his crash and heart attack. The third crew member who responded on September 8th, 2018, was veteran MFD member Chris Clabots.
“It’s not every day that someone walks in and thanks us for saving their life,” says Firefighter/Paramedic Bryson Cruise.
Bryson and Dylan thanked Glen for stopping by to see them. “My body hurt all over when I woke up, but the pain meant that I was alive,” said Glen recalling his time at the hospital.
The ambulance crew will tell you that they were just doing their job, but Glen knows that their job that day meant saving his life. The Merrill Fire Department would like to thank Glen Manthei for allowing them to share his story. Most stories are never shared because they are never allowed to be. When they are, we want to share them with the public, so they too can feel the appreciation that we received from Glen for having our service available to him that day, as well as anyone in the Merrill community going forward.
Glen Manthei: “The valiant actions by your highly trained crew saved my life. There isn’t enough words to find to express my thanks. It’s been a year…and every heartbeat I have is a gift…from your men who didn’t give up.”