CHASKA - Lori Horgan’s wish list for Christmas this year is short. Very short. In fact, it’s so short that there is but one item on it.  

Lori smiles as she nods across her kitchen counter towards Dan Horgan, her husband of 28 years.

“He’s all that I want under the tree this year,” she said, pausing a moment before adding, “As long as he’s clothed.”

Dan breaks into a hearty laugh at Lori’s comment. His laugh is a welcome sound to Lori because earlier this year it was a sound that that the Chaska resident wasn’t sure she’d ever hear again.

This past summer, Dan, 48, suffered cardiac arrest. The episode sent him to the hospital for two weeks and involved inducing hypothermia to minimize brain damage. But the Horgans think Dan’s chances of survival were also greatly increased by the Chaska Police Department’s quick response time and the automated external defibrillators (AEDs) installed in the city’s fleet of cop cars.

Cardiac arrest

Dan’s ordeal began on the morning of Aug. 2.

 “It was a normal Sunday,” he recalled. “We got up, read the paper, made waffles.”

Dan doesn’t remember much more than that.

“He was down at the end of the counter paying bills,” said Lori. “I said something and there was no response. I said something else and there was still no response. I looked up and there he was lying on the counter.

Lori said she thought he was being funny “because he had joked earlier about how the bills were going to kill him.”

She quickly realized Dan wasn’t kidding, though. After she labored to get him down onto the floor, she took his pulse and came up empty-handed. His heart had stopped beating.

Lori then called 9-1-1 and began giving him CPR as she waited for help to arrive. She estimated it was no more than five minutes before Chaska Police Officer Brady Juell was at their door. Juell used the AED to give Dan a couple of jolts to restart his heart.

Not long after, an ambulance arrived to transport Dan to Ridgeview Medical Center in Waconia where he was stabilized before heading to Abbott Northwestern.

In the ambulance, paramedics began the process of icing Dan’s body to cool it down from 98.6 degrees to 91 degrees.  The process continued once Dan arrived at Abbott Northwestern.

Lori didn’t know anything about hypothermia therapy when they arrived at the hospital. Even repeated Internet searches failed to answer their questions.

“It’s so new,” she said. “There’s no information online. You can’t even research it.”

Lori trusted Dan’s physicians and consented to the 48-hour process of cooling and re-warming the body.

“It’s shown that people have less brain damage,” she said.

“Within the first 24 hours, you’re wondering what did you get involved with,” she admitted. “There’s no consciousness. He feels cold, dead.”

When Dan’s body was warmed back up to 98.6 degrees, Lori anxiously awaited for him to open his eyes again. But that didn’t happen right away.

“It was horrifying when he wasn’t waking up,” she said.

Instead of waking up two days after his cardiac arrest, it took Dan a week to come around.

“He had a reaction to the sedation,” Lori explained, noting that he was given Propofol, the same sedative that received great notoriety following the death of pop singer Michael Jackson.

When doctors finally began to reduce the Propofol being administered, Dan began to come around, much to Lori’s relief.

“We have a code,” she said. “Squeeze the hand three times.”

Though Dan was intubated and wasn’t able to talk after he woke up, he was able to squeeze his wife’s hand the requisite three times, bringing tears of joy to her eyes.

For Dan, waking up in a hospital bed hooked up to a host of beeping machines triggered plenty of questions.

“I felt weak, scared and confused,” he said.

Dan soon learned that his heart had stopped. Unlike a heart attack or heart disease, he found that his problem was “electrical.” Dan knew that he had arrhythmia, but was surprised to find out that it could have killed him.

“Nobody said you wouldn’t wake up one day,” said Lori.

Dan now has a defibrillator in his chest that should jolt his heart back into rhythm if need be.

Since August, his recovery has been speedy. A week after waking up, Dan was discharged to home to regain his strength. He was back full-time to his job as a computer technician just after Labor Day.

Dan said he feels 95 percent as he did before Aug. 2 though he still has some numbness in his leg and occasional memory lapses.

“It seems like my Google search is off,” he described.

He’s changed his lifestyle, joining a gym and eating better, even though he knows there was little he could have done to avoid the cardiac arrest he suffered.

“I’m prepping myself so it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

Thankful

While the physical recovery has been challenging, wrapping his head around what happened to him has also been difficult for Dan. He has trouble holding back the tears when he thinks about what Lori and his family went through the week he was in a coma.

“It’s always there, in our minds,” said Lori.

“It was two weeks, but everyday felt like a year,” she added.

“I’m thankful I had Lori and the family there to speak up for me,” he said.

Dan is also thankful for the quick response of the Chaska Police. “By golly, if I get pulled over by that man, I’m gonna get out and hug him,” he said.

Chaska Police Chief Scott Knight explained that they have had AEDs in their cars since the late 80s.

“We were one of the first police departments in Minnesota to use those devices,” he said. “They are very effective and have saved numerous lives.”

From the Horgans’ perspective, the cost to put the AEDs in the cars was well worth it.

“[Juell] was just doing his job, but he saved a life that day,” said Lori.  “I’m thankful to be here,” said Dan. “I’m thankful for everything. I’m thankful to be able to go get a tree and just (pause) just to be here.”

Lori smiles as he looks up to the ceiling to ward off the tears.

“They call this [cooling procedure] a re-birth,” she said. “You’re basically dead and then you’re brought back to life.”

“[When this was happening] I told everyone I didn’t have any regrets, it just wasn’t long enough [with Dan],” she added.

Now, with their new lease on life, the Horgans are enjoying every day together. There are only two rules Lori has forced upon Dan.

“He can’t sit at that end of the counter and he’s not allowed to pay bills on Sunday,” she said.