Friends of Chris and Yvonne Passmore have planned a barbecue meal, a dance with a live band and a sausage-and-gravy breakfast afterward Saturday night in Strong City. Proceeds will be used to help defray the Passmores’ expenses after Chris suffered multiple heart attacks and a rare reaction to a treatment drug that almost killed him.
Apparently it takes more than suffering multiple heart attacks and an almost-deadly drug reaction to scare Chris Passmore.
“It’s pretty strange, this once-in-a-lifetime stuff,” Passmore said, chuckling about his experiences and his good fortune. “We’ve done about everything once, but I’m not going to try skydiving.”
Passmore, who lives in Cottonwood Falls, has had more than his share of excitement.
“I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” he said, referring not only to the experiences but to the friends who have rallied to help.
“You don’t realize how many friends you have until you almost are not going to get to see them again forever,” he said.
Passmore survived heart surgery and several heart attacks in the days following his first heart attack on May 14. Then he outlasted a severe reaction to heparin, a blood-thinner used in conjunction with heart surgery. Instead of helping Passmore, the drug caused an outbreak of blood clots that undid many of the surgical repairs.
Those complications caused doctors at Topeka’s Stormont-Vail hospital to send him on a life-flight helicopter journey to St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., which specializes in heart problems.
Medical bills accompanying his treatment and subsequent recovery from those episodes are still coming in, and friends now are rallying to help Passmore and his wife, Yvonne, with the expenses.
A benefit dance and barbecue to benefit the couple is planned on Saturday at the Strong City Rodeo Pavillion. For Passmore, it will be another once-in-a-lifetime experience for which he is exceptionally appreciative and touched.
“The response that we’ve had, it’s just been unbelievable,” said Passmore, who owns a construction company. “It gives me a more positive attitude” seeing and talking with the friends who have flocked around in support.
The fundraiser is a crowning event on a list of things Passmore is grateful for.
It will begin at 6 p.m. with a barbecue catered by Bad Ol’ Bern’s of Emporia. Sandwiches, potato salad and cole slaw will be served.
At 8 p.m., the Powder River Band will play for a dance. Biscuits, gravy, and coffee will be served at 11:30 p.m., before the dance ends at midnight. A cash bar will be open to serve beer and soft drinks.
The cost of both meals and the dance is $20 per person.
The event has been organized by Collene Slabaugh of Strong City and Suzan Barnes of Cottonwood Falls, with help from Emporians Paul and Janice DeBauge and Richard and Rosie Bennett.
Donations also will be accepted. More information may be had by calling Slabaugh, (620) 273-6332, or Barnes, (620) 273-6763.
The Passmores plan to attend at least part of the festivities, depending upon the weather and his health.
Passmore’s problems had begun May 14, a Wednesday, as he prepared to drive to Kansas City International Airport to pick up his wife.
“He had been having chest pains all morning and he didn’t do anything about it,” Yvonne Passmore said. “By the time he got up there, he wasn’t feeling too good.”
He did not want to look for a hospital in the Kansas City area and decided to stop at Stormont-Vail in Topeka, where he soon underwent a heart catheterization and learned that he had six blockages. A six-way bypass followed on Friday morning, May 16.
“The doctor came out about 1:15 to 1:30. ‘He’s going to be fine,’ he said. Everything went good,’” she said.
By Monday morning, he wasn’t doing well and suffered another mild heart attack. Clots again blocked an artery that had been repaired. Another catheterization followed and doctors continued to be optimistic.
On Wednesday, a week after the initial heart attack, he began having more chest pains and was taken again to the Intensive Care Unit.
This time, a heart catheterization showed that three more grafts had failed. Doctors ballooned one of them open, inserted a stent into a second artery and said there was nothing to be done for the third; it would have to remain blocked.
“Dr. Lutz told me, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t have a clue. I’ve never had anybody do this,’” Yvonne Passmore recalled.
The following morning, Passmore suffered a fourth heart attack, which incapacitated the stent.
“Then Friday, they said they were sure he had another (heart attack),” Yvonne Passmore said. “They said ... they were going to have to send him somewhere. We’re going to have to make a decision. We don’t have the life support to keep him alive.”
Soon after he was loaded onto a helicopter for the flight to Kansas City, one of the laboratories that tested his blood called with results: he had developed an antibody against the heparin. In the process, Passmore had lost five of his six bypasses.
St. Luke’s transplant team was called in to treat him and, for a time, it was “touch-and-go,” Yvonne said.
Doctors inserted a breathing tube and installed a balloon pump to give his heart a rest. He lost circulation to his feet and his fingers; they turned black, peeled deeply and a toe still has not healed.
“He had blood clots in his legs, his arms, his neck; he had them everywhere,” she said.
At that point, nothing more could be done. If he made it through the night, he had a chance.
A heart transplant was ruled out, because of his condition and because of his reaction to heparin.
Whether it was the physical conditioning from his construction work, or whether luck or a higher power intervened, Chris Passmore rallied and recovered enough to be sent home to recuperate.
Passmore laughed this week as he speculated about what doctors thought of him: “This guy just won’t die.”
Passmore, now 40 pounds lighter, takes short walks after each meal, eats healthy foods and watches his cholesterol intake. Humid weather exacerbates a shortness of breath and, he said he usually naps after each walk.
“The doctor’s already told me I’m going to be totally disabled,” Passmore said. “He says I’m done. ...
“But I’m not going to give up yet. It’s just that my heart took such a beating on this whole thing, the best thing I can do is don’t do anything for the next four to six months.”
Then, there will be another catheterization to assess his status and decide what the next course of action will be.
The trauma of the last few weeks hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm for living and it’s heightened his appreciation of friends and family. Though sadness about what he has lost creeps in occasionally, having that moral support a difference in his attitude and his recovery. He singled out his wife for special credit.
“She’s stuck with me every step of the way,” Passmore said. “She’s my nurse. ... She’s everything to me.”
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