Save a life: Marilyn Pitts, a trained nurse, saved her husband Larry’s life with her quick thinking

When Larry Pitts went into cardiac arrest last July, it happened without warning.
An Army veteran who had kept active and in decent shape, Larry, 63, had finished a little yard work with his wife Marilyn when he collapsed.
Luckily, Marilyn, who was a trained nurse, saved his life with her quick thinking and more than seven minutes of CPR.
CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is an emergency lifesaving procedure performed when the heart stops beating, according to the Mayo Clinic. It involves chest compressions and giving breaths during a cardiac event.
“I was just sitting there in the garage cooling off after mowing the front yard,” Larry said.
It was July so it was warm, but he had a fan blowing and was sitting down.
Marilyn, who had been tending to their rose bushes, brought him a Gatorade and they chatted for a bit.
“The next thing I know is my eyes open and I’m in a hospital,” he said. “For me, I had just put the lawn mower away, but here I was with a scar on my chest and bandages.”
For Marilyn, also 63, it had been a completely different story.
“He got up from his chair to give me a hug and kiss, took two sips and went straight back,” she said.
She said when he fell backward, his eyes were open, and he was as stiff as a board.
“It happened so fast I couldn’t catch him,” she said, “He hit his head when he went down and started bleeding. He turned a dark bluish gray almost immediately and I knew he was not getting any air. There was no pulse, so I started CPR right away.”
Her decades of medical training kicked in and she went to work.
“I’ve done CPR so many times that I didn’t hesitate to do it. It was instinct,” she said.
It had been a weekday in the summer so despite Marilyn screaming for help, no one heard her.
“I thought a neighbor would hear me, but there was no one,” Marilyn said. “I did a cycle or two and went to grab my phone. I was trained [that] you get help when you can, so I just kept going, screaming the whole time to try to find help.”
She said Larry tried breathing a few times on his own, but he was not consistent.
“He was not coming out of it,” Marilyn said. “I didn’t know why he had collapsed, and on top of it, he now had a head injury. I didn’t know if it was his heart or a stroke, I just knew he wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse so [I] kept doing CPR.”
When the paramedics arrived, Marilyn had spent seven and a half minutes rotating between chest compressions and giving breaths despite the July heat and her asthma.
“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever had to do with my husband,” she said.
The couple has known each other since they were in high school, living in the small town of Bradley, Illinois, south of Chicago in the mid-1970s.
“We went to high school together, but I was so shy. I couldn’t even talk to her,” Larry said.
After they graduated in 1978, Larry ended up joining the Army and saw the world while Marilyn went to work in health care for UNC Rex Hospital in Raleigh.
And as luck would have it, the pair had a second chance for love at their 35-year high school reunion.
“We realized that we had both spent the last 20 years in North Carolina only 80 miles apart,” she said.
Larry knew it was now or never and asked her to lunch. From there, the pair knew that there was something special between the two of them.
When he proposed, they were at one of their favorite spots at Fort Fisher just south of Wilmington.
“We had been talking about it for a long time and I knew I was crazy about her. It was between these oak trees and the ocean, and I didn’t even have a ring. I just asked,” he said.
Marilyn said yes and then laughed that they could go ring shopping together.
“When he didn’t have a ring, I just said that’s good, I can pick it out,” she said with a smile.
Shortly thereafter, the two married one early morning in January at a gazebo near the place he proposed.
“Both of us had been married and then divorced. And I swore I’d never get married again, but we had a great connection,” she said.
Little did they know then that she would save his life years later.
When Larry woke up a week after his coronary event, the first face he saw was Marilyn’s.
“As I was coming out of it, I saw my wife and was just really confused to be in the hospital,” he said.
He had bandages on his chest and leg and was also on a ventilator, a medical machine that helps patients breathe.
When Larry found out that he had gone into cardiac arrest so suddenly, he was surprised.
“I had never had problems,” he said. “I didn’t have chest pain or shortness of breath. There was no warning.”
Marilyn told him that he had a triple bypass and had been in the hospital for a week.
“He had a 95% blockage in his right coronary artery and had to have surgery,” she said. “He was sedated so he couldn’t move, and his heart could heal. His heart function improved from 20% to 50-60% just from the rest [he was able to get].”
He was stunned, but the next day, was well enough to be talking and sitting in a chair.
“I walk in, and he says, ‘Hello, sweetheart.’ And he was back,” she said.
Marilyn said the staff at Cape Fear Valley Heart & Vascular Center gave her complete confidence that would be the outcome of Larry’s treatment.
“The whole team, every single person, from the liaison in the emergency department to the chaplain to the staff in the ICU, were stellar,” she said. “Everyone knew exactly what they were doing … They never made me feel like there was no hope.”
But it was Marilyn who had kept him alive until Cape Fear Valley Health personnel could take over.
“She saved my life,” Larry said. “I’m reset and back to normal because of my wife. If she hadn’t done what she did, I could have lost functionality.”
After six months and adhering to strict physical therapy exercises at home, Larry has fully recovered.
Now, the grateful couple enjoys taking walks through downtown Hope Mills and staying active together.
Marilyn hopes that others hear their story and feel encouraged that they can help others if the situation ever arises.
“People might be afraid to do CPR, but you could save someone,” she said. “The key is to do it as soon as possible. If I had waited or if I had tried to drive him to the hospital, it might have been a different outcome. Jump in and start it.”