Rankin124web

When
Seconds
Mary Mullen Brinson
Count
Elizabeth Ann Howell, VP of design and culture at Miskelly Furniture,
saved her husband, Tyler’s, life thanks to her fast-acting response in
performing CPR and calling 911 immediately when she discovered
him unresponsive in the middle of the night in January 2023.
Elizabeth Ann (Miskelly) and Tyler met
in 2017 while Tyler was in his fourth year of
medical school, and they married the
following year. In 2022, Elizabeth Ann was
trained in CPR at work, but she assumed
that if someone in her family ever needed
CPR, her physician husband would be able
to help. She never imagined that the training
she received would allow her to help save
her husband’s life a year later when he
suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in the
middle of the night.
Elizabeth Ann awoke in the night,
hearing a noise. She thought it was the dog,
then she realized the noise was coming from
Tyler. “I tried to shake him awake,” she said.
“I thought he was just having a bad dream.
In that moment, the training that I had
learned from our CPR class kind of kicked
in,” said the relieved EA, as she is known to
family and close friends. “I called 911, put
them on speaker phone, pulled him off the
bed, and started doing chest compressions.
I was on the phone with 911 for nine minutes
before the first responders arrived to take
over and provided the necessary shocks from
an AED (automated external defibrillator).”
Once the first responders arrived, EA
called her family and a close friend, who is
also a cardiology fellow and happened to live
just a few blocks away from the Howells.
He was able to quickly get to their house, ride
in the ambulance with Tyler, and support
him through a series of very scary and
life-threatening events. They got him to a
local hospital, where he was immediately
placed in the cardiac ICU and put on a
ventilator.
Later in the night, Tyler awoke and was
quickly aware of what had happened. He
was able to communicate with hospital staff
and his wife, Elizabeth Ann. This was a
major reassurance because the medical staff
was concerned about the possibility of brain
injury due to the amount of time his organs
went without oxygen. Tyler had no visual
or mental effects from the event and was
thankful to have received an implanted
defibrillator a few days later. The defibrillator
allows his heart to maintain appropriate
rhythm, should his heart ever stop again.
Hometown RANKIN • 25