SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. — For eight minutes on June 11, Brad Garrett was dead. His heart had completely stopped, not once, not twice, but three times until he was finally stabilized.
“I knew that Brad was gone at that point,” Brad’s wife, Nicole Garrett, said.
Brad Garrett was in the middle of preparing to move from Spokane Valley to his current home in Missouri when he started having serious chest pains. According to Nicole Garrett, firefighters were at their house within a couple minutes of her calling 9-1-1, and they couldn’t have gotten there any sooner.
“Brad collapsed,” Spokane Valley Firefighter Brook Brown said. “We kinda caught him, he was super diaphoretic, sweaty, slick, not shirt on. So not much to grab but we got him onto the gurney.”
Garrett was transported to the hospital, eventually spending nearly two months there dealing with a whole host of health issues.
“They thought I would be on dialysis, if not for the rest of my life, at least for a very long time,” Brad Garrett said. “Turned out, within a month my kidneys were back and I was on the road to recovery.”
Eventually, he was released and completed his move to Missouri, but not before he came back to give his thanks to the Spokane Valley Fire Department.
“We get a knock on the door, which happens every shift,” Brown said. “It’s a guy and a lady and I didn’t recognize him so I said ‘can I help you?’ He said, ‘well you may not remember me,’ and he started talking and I was like, ‘oh, I remember you.’ Then it was just satisfaction to just talk to him.”
Five months later, Brad Garrett says he feels normal. Even though he remembers nothing from that day or the two weeks after, he remains grateful.
“Statistically, about 8% of people that have a cardiac arrest outside the hospital survive. The rest do not,” Brad Garrett said. “It all comes down to what happens in those eight minutes, for me. Those eight minutes, the firemen knew exactly what to do.”
The Garretts also credit their faith for getting them through such a challenging time.
“We truly had thousands of people across the country praying for us,” Brad Garrett said. “And God answered those prayers.”
