I was the best man at my friend's wedding this past weekend. Some of you already know this story, but my buddy had a massive heart-attack last year while I was with him. It happened on Veteran's Day. Since it was a three-day weekend and his fiancée was out of town, I was going to crash at his place for a couple of days so we could hang out and have fun. We had a few drinks that Thursday night while playing video games and the next day he felt like sh*t, vomiting and complaining about heartburn. We just assumed it was a hangover, even though he hadn't drank that much. I was making fun of him and calling him a lightweight. He was 30 years old at the time, so neither of us were thinking heart-attack. Later that afternoon, after coming downstairs from trying to take a nap, he staggered and face-planted. At first I assumed he'd fainted, but once I rolled him over and saw how he looked, I knew it was something far more serious.
I quickly called 911 and they instructed me to perform chest compressions. At that point he was already turning blue. The paramedics eventually arrived and took over. They had to shock him to get his heart started. At the hospital they did this thing called a hypothermic cooling process where they cooled his body a few degrees in order to preserve brain function. It was a scary, stressful time. The prognosis looked dim. He had gone several minutes without oxygen to the brain, so we didn't know if he was going to be a vegetable or come out severely handicapped. Even after doctors put the stints in his heart and took him off sedation, several days passed before he regained consciousness. Miraculously, however, with the exception of some short-term memory loss, he woke up the same person. I had everyone calling me a hero for how quickly I reacted during the situation and for apparently doing a good enough job of keeping blood pumping to his brain during those crucial minutes until the paramedics arrived.
Fast-forward almost a year later and here he is getting married. You'd never know the guy almost died. His wedding was epic. Beautiful weather. Beautiful venue. I was nervous about having to deliver a best man speech since there were close to 150 people there, many of whom I've never met, but according to everyone I knocked it out of the park. I had people laughing and cheering, and unlike everyone else who spoke, I didn't get emotional or read from a piece of paper, instead just going off what I'd rehearsed in my head. I've been best friends with the guy for 15+ years now, going back to early on in high school, so I had plenty of fun memories to draw from.
Anyways, here's some pics from the day:
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