COLORADO SPRINGS — It was supposed to be a normal Saturday night back in December for Brandon Bartlett. He was spending an evening out at Top Golf in Colorado Springs with friends and his fiancé, but in between swings, things took a turn.
"I was just, you know, talking to my friends and then I just stopped talking. He said I fell into my buddy. That's when I flat-lined," Bartlett said.
He had gone into cardiac arrest and said the next thing he remembered was waking up at the hospital with nurses and family around him.
"People were holding my hands, looking at me into my eyes, checking on me," he said. "Then it was just kind of in and out from there until the next morning when I woke up at the hospital and I finally got an explanation of what just happened to me."
Dustin Hart, the Colorado Springs Top Golf hospitality manager, was one of the first people to help Bartlett when everything happened that night.
"There was a call that came over the radio that we needed a manager. It was a frantic radio call. I saw Brandon, who was on the floor and I immediately tried to get a pulse on him," he said.
Hart and another employee made the quick decision to start CPR and administered one shock from the AED to Bartlett. He said the fire department came about eight minutes later and took over. Bartlett eventually woke up after the fire department administered compressions and was taken to a nearby hospital.
"My chances were less than 5% of surviving a widow-maker artery heart attack," he said.
Doctors told him he had a 100% blood clot in his left anterior descending artery.
"It definitely puts a different perspective on life when something like that happens to you. I can't take anything for granted," he said.
Now, standing in the same place where the incident happened, eight months later, Bartlett said he was given a second chance at life. He credits Hart and the other employees for saving his life. The two reunited for the first time on Thursday since that day back in December.
"It's a very surreal feeling to realize that the person you're standing next to actually saved my life," he said.
The Colorado Springs Fire Department honored Hart, Kitty Roberts, and Roman Davis with the Citizen Lifesaving Award at the beginning
of August. In a letter to the employees, Fire Chief Randy Royal said their "quick recognition" of the emergency "made the difference in saving his life." Roberts said she is now pursuing a career as a firefighter because of the incident.
Bartlett said, now, that he just wants to finish his golf game.
"I'll definitely be bringing the wife back and you know, have a full night of golfing. I probably ended my game a little early so I definitely need to come out and finish my game up," he said.
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