On a cold day in January, Karen Silverio was headed to work. She sent her daughter off to school, picked up coffee from Wawa, and parked at Rowan Virtua College of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, South Jersey.
Silverio works as a practice patient for medical students there. That day, she was scheduled to act like she needed medical attention, so students could learn to work with actual human patients. She never imagined she’d become a real patient, let alone one in need of critical care.
On the walk from her car to the building, Silverio collapsed.
“I don’t remember anything after that,” Silverio explained. “Except for what my family and friends have told me.”
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A Rowan University police officer started compressions. Minutes later, Krzysztof Zembrzuski pulled into the parking lot. The third-year medical student saw what was happening and jumped in to help.
“He came over and he gave me CPR compressions,” Silverio said. “He did them correctly and he definitely saved my life.”
Zembrzuski used a defibrillator to shock Silverio, and didn’t stop trying to revive her.
Health
“It was like autopilot,” Zembrzuski told NBC10. “It was heat of the moment. You kinda just rely on your training. You don’t really think, you just do.”
Paramedics arrived and brought Silverio to Jefferson Stratford Hospital, which just happens to share a parking lot with the building Silverio was headed toward when she collapsed. Doctors put Silverio on a ventilator and did what they could, hoping a lack of oxygen wouldn’t damage her brain.
Zembrzuski went about his day, but kept thinking of the woman he’d helped that morning. After class, he walked over to the hospital to learn what happened.
“I just wanted to know if she made it or not,” Zembrzuski said. “To be honest with you, I was 99.9, if not 100%, sure she didn’t.”
Doctors told Zembrzuski that his unexpected patient had survived.
“It was one of those moments where, even with all the training what you learn, you think that something shouldn’t happen,” recalled Zembrzuski. “But then there’s miracles, there really are. You can’t learn that in a textbook.”
Whether it was the proximity to a defibrillator, Zembrzuski’s refusal to give up, or the location of the collapse, the reason for Silverio’s recovery isn’t clear.
“I don’t think science could explain everything that happened with Karen,” Zembrzuski noted.
He said what happened solidified his career choice of critical care anesthesiology.
“For me, it was everything to re-instill my motivation to keep going," he said. "To maybe even help me decide a career choice that would involve being in situations that are critical.”
As for Silverio, doctors think they found the reason for her collapse. A rare condition called mitral annular disjunction. It happens with the mitral valve and left ventricle mismatch. Silverio showed no signs of having a heart condition before it nearly killed her.
“I wasn’t breathing for 45 minutes,” she explained. “I literally had died.”
Now, she has a defibrillator and pacemaker working to keep her healthy. To pay it forward, Silverio says she has two missions: educate doctors on the rare condition and educate the public on the importance of CPR.
“It was a miracle a true miracle, everything that happened,” said Silverio. “We’ll be heart buddies for life,” she said of the man who saved her.
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