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Quick action from UF veterinary emergency and critical care resident saves life of runner

By Sarah Carey

When Dr. Taylor Curley, chief resident with the emergency and critical care team at the University of Florida Small Animal Hospital, accompanied four of her critical care colleagues on a trip to participate in the annual Key West Half Marathon and 5K race in mid-January, the last thing she expected was to be frantically performing lifesaving measures on a fellow runner.

Curley had dropped back from her teammates to take a bathroom break, but soon after resumed running. She was around the 12-mile mark when she saw a man ahead of her wobble and go down, having a seizure.

Her instincts kicked in. Curley rushed to the man, 57-year-old Mike Raymond of Pennsylvania, turned him on his side and protected his head.

“I asked people around me to call for medical help, and about one minute into his seizure, he took a really deep breath and he turned pale,” Curley said. “It kind of looked like he had left his body. He was grey and his pupils were fixed. I just knew he had died.”

Curley immediately began performing CPR, assisted by race volunteer Kathryn Nass, a retired emergency nurse, and they yelled for a bystander to retrieve an automated external defibrillator, or AED, from a nearby cruise ship. Eventually, emergency physician Dr. Ann Giovanni, who works in Miami, also stopped to help.

“It took a while,” Curley said. “We defibrillated him once and after around eight or nine minutes, EMS arrived and took him away. At that point, he had a heartbeat again.”

Three months later, after two weeks at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami and major heart bypass surgery, Raymond is back home in Pennsylvania, where he has seen a cardiologist and begun a regimen of intense physical therapy. He has no memory of what happened after he went down, and has spent considerable time tracking down the people who helped him in order to reconstruct the sequence of events.

“Two days after that Sunday morning, I woke up at Mount Sinai with tubes all in me,” Raymond said. “The last thing I remember is that I took a picture of the cruise ship at Mile 12. Right after that, I went down. I had no symptoms whatsoever.”

A race photographer had snapped a photo of him at Mile 11, smiling and looking like he was having a great time, Raymond said. One mile later, he collapsed.

“I’ve done 28 half marathons and eight full marathons, but this was my dream race and on my bucket list,” said Raymond, adding that heart disease runs in his family. Because of this, he began working out in his early 40s in an effort to stay as healthy as possible. Up until the morning of his heart attack, his strategy seemed to be working.

Giovanni said that when she approached Mile Marker 12, near Mallory Square, a Key West landmark and a hub for cruise ships, she saw Raymond down and Curley providing CPR to him with a female police officer providing rescue breaths.

“I’ve been an ER doctor for 12 years, and they had it under control,” said Giovanni. “Taylor was doing an amazing job. I just started screaming for someone to get an AED. A guy nearby said there was one on the boat, and ran to get it. He came back with the defibrillator and they shocked him with it and got a pulse back.”

Raymond’s wife, Lorena, was at the finish line waiting for him when she looked at her phone’s location-tracking “Life360”app and noticed he wasn’t moving. She waited three minutes and he still wasn’t moving, so she called his phone and a police officer answered.

“He told her, ‘all I can say is that your husband collapsed,’” Raymond said. “He asked her where she was and what she was wearing. When they finally found each other, the officer told Raymond’s wife that he had been on his way to tell her that her husband had passed away. But a few minutes later, he found out that I’d been taken to the hospital so he told her to find me there.”

Raymond was initially taken to the Lower Keys Medical Center in Key West, then was subsequently moved to Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. After Raymond’s by-pass surgery and initial recovery, he was released. It took three days for him and his wife to drive home to Pennsylvania.

“We only got married four months ago,” said Raymond, who is still on short-term disability leave from his manufacturing job. “She keeps saying, you owe me a vacation and a hair color. I said, ‘I gave you two more weeks in Miami, what more do you want?’ For better or worse … this is the worse. We’ve gotten that out of the way now.”

As soon as he was able, he connected by phone with Curley and Giovanni, who works at Baptist Health’s West Kendall Emergency Room, to thank them and to ask for their help in reconstructing what happened on that fateful day. Both doctors – the animal doctor and the human one – were happy to share details about their involvement and gratitude that everyone’s efforts were in the end able to save Raymond’s life.

“It was a great outcome that we don’t see often,” said Giovanni. “The stars aligned that day for Mike in regards to who was in close proximity. It also highlights the importance of knowing CPR.”

After EMS arrived and took Raymond away, Giovanni and Curley ran together to finish the race.

“It was the fastest race I’ve ever run,” Giovanni said. “We gave each other a teary-eyed hug at the finish line and that was it.”

Subsequently, Giovanni sought out Curley and the two have maintained a connection.

“I see cardiac arrests pretty frequently as I work in the ER and those are kind of our bread and butter,” Giovanni said. “You have that trauma you deal with, and then you have to reset and go on to your next patient. I thought Taylor was a human physician or a critical care physician. I told Mike when we spoke I wanted to be very clear that I happened to be a bystander with an M.D. after my name. These guys had it all under control.”

Barbara Wright, founder and director of the Key West Half Marathon, said a similar situation happened at the race about seven years ago when a runner went down after a heart attack and his life was saved, thanks to quick-thinking, fast-acting and medically trained fellow runners who rushed to assist.

“Both of these men were lucky enough to have these events happen at the right time and in the right place to be able to survive,” Wright said “After what happened in that first situation, we started offering discounts to anyone who is CPR-trained. We plan to do this in the future as well. Anyone who can show they are CPR-certified can get a discount and/or merchandise credit.”

She was impressed with Curley’s role and how she handled the situation.

“I didn’t even know veterinarians did CPR on animals,” Wright said.

Curley said she still gets emotional every time she thinks of the experience.

“Running is my outlet,” she said. “Possibly as traumatizing as anything was that this event was intended to bring me joy, and then this very acutely negative thing happened during it. After Ann, the ER doctor, and I ran the last 1.5 mile of the race together in silence, I think the adrenaline slowed down a little bit.”

Curley’s two mentors, Dr. Ashley Allen-Durrance and Dr. Jennifer Martinez, both of whom are faculty emergency and critical care specialists at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine, were at the finish line and had no idea what had happened.

“Dr. Allen knows me so well, she could tell by looking at me that someone was wrong and she asked me what it was,” Curley said. “I just said, ‘A guy died.’”

Ironically, before the race began, Taylor had joined Allen-Durrance and Martinez, along with current ECC resident Diana Carter and former resident Dr. Lauren Brachii, for a group photo in which all are shown wearing white and black team T-shirts with the message, “Please Resuscitate.”

Now that she knows Raymond survived and is doing well, Curley feels grateful for the support she’s received among her ER colleagues and is looking forward to reuniting with Raymond and Giovanni at a future race, probably in 2026.

“I think journeys like this are life-changing in the sense of, you just appreciate so much more,” Curley said. “I’m normally a pretty positive person, but after this, I was, like, I’m going to enjoy every moment and really not take things for granted. Literally at any moment, someone you love could have this happen to them. I know everyone says this, but life is way, way too short.”

The way so many people worked together to share updates, help out and stay in touch was deeply affecting, Curley said.

“In this situation, there were really good people in the world that decided to take care of each other when we didn’t have to do any of that,” she said, adding that one of her biggest takeaways from the experience was the general awareness that “you really can save someone.”

“I’ll quote Dr. Allen, my mentor, who says, ‘It’s better to choose to be a good human than to wish that you had done something,’” Curley said. “I think we all need to make a conscious decision to be a good human and a better human, and that would make the world a better place.”

Allen said she was not surprised by Curley’s selfless decision to use her critical care training and act quickly to help her fellow runner.

“She has a huge heart and infectious optimism,” Allen said. “I hope her story empowers others to take action when facing similar situations.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both Curley and Giovanni were grateful to have been there to help save Raymond’s life that day. As Curley said, “you really can save someone” with quick action.

“It was a great outcome that we don’t see often,” said Giovanni. “The stars aligned that day for Mike in regards to who was in close proximity. It also highlights the importance of knowing CPR.”

Raymond made a point of connecting with all of the people involved in helping him, and hopes to reunite with Curley and Giovanni to run together again in Key West at a future race.

Ironically, before the race began, Curley had joined her mentors, Drs. Ashley Allen-Durrance and Jennifer Martinez, along with current ECC resident Dr. Diana Carter and former resident Dr. Lauren Brachii, for a group photo in which they were all wearing white and black team T-shirts with the message, “Please Resuscitate.”

“In this situation, there were really good people in the world that decided to take care of each other when we didn’t have to do any of that,” Curley reflected. “I’ll quote Dr. Allen, my mentor, who says, ‘It’s better to choose to be a good human than to wish that you had done something.’ I think we all need to make a conscious decision to be a good human and a better human, and that would make the world a better place.”

Allen said she was not surprised by Curley’s selfless decision to use her critical care training and act quickly to help her fellow runner.

“She has a huge heart and infectious optimism,” Allen said. “I hope her story empowers others to take action when facing similar situations.”