Special Feature: How to Save a Life

HOW TO SAVE A LIFE

NCHA $3 million rider credits his life to the quick response from cutters in the right place, at the right time, leads to change across all NCHA affiliates.

BY ANNA LAURENT

The events that transpired at a cutting horse show in Paradise, Texas, on October 2, 2021, were nothing short of a miracle.

Everything NCHA Open Riders Hall of Famer, Jason Clark, of Weatherford, Texas, knows about the events that occurred on this day comes from second-hand accounts.

“I don’t remember anything,” Clark said. “I don’t remember working horses that morning or even a couple of months before that. The doctors say I may never remember any of that; it’s totally normal.”

By all accounts, Clark would have never made it out of the arena that day if things had not lined up perfectly.

“Mine was the perfect scenario,” Clark said. “It just wasn’t my time, and it was a miracle that I made it. Everything just lined up.”

From what he has been told, it was just a normal show day when he started his morning at 2 a.m.

“We worked a handful of show horses and some three-year-olds, then off to the show we went,” Clark said. “I had my wife and my son helping me, Becky and Cooper.”

Clark’s first horse to show that day was one of his own, a six-year-old gelding called Shorty Katz.

“I did really good,” Clark said. “I marked a 74 and then there was someone after me, and then I showed again.”

Cooper told Clark that he remembers seeing him lean on the fence with his arm by his head after he finished showing his first horse, which seemed out of the ordinary at the time.

Afterward, Becky brought Clark his next horse to show. He proceeded to mark a score of 75, which put him in first and second place. After the buzzer went off, Clark’s life would change forever.

“My head went all the way back to the horse’s tail; everyone thought I was joking around, because I had just marked two good scores,” Clark said.

Everyone, that is, except Becky. By the time his wife made it to him and the horse, Clark was already blue.

“Everyone was just frozen; nobody knew what to do,” Clark said. “Becky grabbed the horse. John Wold, Josh Townsend, and Rick Hayes were helping me. She hollered to them, ‘Help me get him off,’ you know?”

Luckily for Clark, Kadee Belle Hall, the daughter of Shannon Hall, one of Clark’s good friends, was also at the show. Kadee Belle had just been CPR certified the week prior, but she had never performed CPR on anything other than the class Manikin, a type of mannequin used in the healthcare industry, designed to simulate the human body during various healthcare scenarios.

“I had just given her a hug like 20 minutes ago, you know?” Clark said. “Her mom screamed, ‘Kadee Belle, Kadee Belle!’ She runs up, and it’s me - a lifelong friend of the family. It had to be a God thing, because Kadee Belle was not even going to come [to the cutting that day]. Her younger sister, Jo, had just started showing, and Kadee just thought at the last minute, ‘You know, I’m going to go support my sister and surprise her.’”

As Clark lay on the arena floor and Kadee Belle performed CPR, Sara Allstadt, a small animal veterinarian and fellow NCHA

member, gave breaths, and Whitney Hall, Kadee Belle’s older sister, continuously wiped his face and prayed over him.

“We were probably 30 minutes from Decatur, Texas, the closest big city, but we are out in the country, and nobody is going to get there quick,” Clark said. “It’s total panic-mode, and my wife and my son are freaking out.”

For over 30 minutes, Kadee Belle performed CPR.

“When I was in the hospital, my story had kind of gotten around,” Clark said. “The nurses, both males and females, said that they can perform CPR for about four minutes and their arms are just smoked. [Kadee Belle] did [CPR] for 30 minutes on me. So, she is like my angel - big time.

“My wife was praying for the best, but in her mind, she was thinking it was not good, especially when I am blue,” Clark said. “The ambulance finally gets there and gets me loaded. They shock me two or three times, and I died again on the way to the hospital.”

When Clark arrived at the nearest hospital, several close friends and family were already there for support. One of the first things the doctor checked was Clark’s brain activity.

“He came out and the first thing he said is, ‘Man, he’s got normal brain activity,’” Clark said. “Everyone just starts crying and screaming with joy.”

Clark still talks to Kadee Belle every couple of weeks, just to check on her and let her know how grateful his family is for the lifesaving measures she performed that day.

Clark continues to be overwhelmed by the amount of support and prayers he received.

“When people go down in the cutting horse world, they treat you like family and they come running,” Clark said. “I just get choked up thinking about it.”

Once Clark was stabilized, the next step was finding a specialist who could identify and treat Clark’s condition. To his surprise, that specialist was a resident at a county hospital not far from his home of Weatherford, Texas. He was care flighted to John Peter Smith Hospital (JPS) in Fort Worth, Texas, and placed under the care of Dr. Vassilis Dimas, a physician who specializes in cardiovascular disease. After a series of tests on his brain and heart, Dr. Dimas diagnosed Clark with arrhythmia, or an irregular heartbeat, and said his episode at the cutting was caused by his heart going into a-fib.

Clark now has a cardioverter-defibrillator, a device for people who are prone to lifethreatening rapid heart rhythms, implanted just below his collarbone.

“If I go into a-fib or have an irregular heartbeat, it will shock me,” Clark said. “It has shocked me three times now, and if you google what it feels like to get shocked by a defibrillator, they say it is equal to getting kicked in the chest by a mule, but you don’t know it’s coming.”

Advice from his doctors to take it easy, combined with the fear of getting shocked unexpectedly, made it intimidating for Clark

“When people go down in the cutting horse world, they treat you like family and they come running.” — Jason Clark

to return to riding and competing at first.

“It was awful not to be able to ride a horse,” Clark said. “I’ve been riding horses ever since I was a little kid. That’s the longest time frame I have ever spent not riding, and the unknown is intimidating. If I get on, am I going to pass out?”

Peace of mind to get back in the saddle came in the form of a heartfelt gift from his wife and family.

“They bought me an Apple Watch for Christmas, and you can check your heart rate on there,” Clark said. “My wife and my son used to joke because, every two minutes, I was on my watch. I’m scared, and the shock deal is intimidating.”

For Clark, it was a comforting visual. When he felt abnormal, he could quickly check his watch and feel reassured.

Clark’s first big show since his incident was the 2022 NCHA Kit Kat Sugar Super Stakes, where he made the Open Super Stakes Classic and Intermediate Open Super Stakes finals and crossed the $3 million earnings mark.

“I think I might have won $25,000 or so,” Clark said. “It was kind of a nice little comeback. I’m just super grateful to have a little momentum going back our way and some positivity.”

In hindsight, there had been signs before that day.

“Maybe two months before that, I had been really short of breath,” Clark said. “I had gone to my normal doctor and done blood work and stress tests, and everything came back perfect. My new heart doctor told me that if it had happened while I had been taking a shower or driving down the road or just home with my wife and my son, it would not have been good. I would really say that every household needs to have one or two people who know CPR. I had even heard that before, but now I really get it.”

This call to action is one that many in the cutting horse family felt. Sandra McBride, whose husband is an electrophysiologist, a doctor who specializes in the electrical pulses in the heart that control its rhythm and triggers heartbeats, was keenly aware of just how badly things could have been if Kadee Belle had not happened to be at the show that day. “A Sudden Cardiac Arrest is caused by an abnormal rhythm of the heart,” McBride said. “This abnormality in the electrical system of the heart causes it to beat extremely rapidly or flutter. When that happens, an individual only has a very short time to act, three minutes, to prevent possible irreversible neurological damage. CPR by trained individuals can keep blood flowing.

“When this happened to Jason Clark last fall, I decided something had to be done about this and that we could do better by our membership if we were better prepared,” McBride said.

McBride approached Lindy Burch, knowing she was CPR trained and certified and had also been involved in previous cardiac events in the arena, to help raise awareness for the cause they aptly called “Cutters with Hearts.”

“I thought [CPR training] was a necessary thing and a good skill to have,” Burch said.

The two began fundraising with the initial goal of $62,792 to provide CPR training and Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) to NCHA affiliates to help them be prepared for a possible Sudden Cardiac Arrest incident. To Burch, the biggest challenge lies in getting people comfortable with using an AED, if necessary.

“This is something that is as easy to use as turning on your phone; you just have to be willing to try,” Burch said.

As of press time, $63,065 has been raised, exceeding the initial goal set by McBride and Burch, allowing AEDs to be placed with 38 NCHA affiliates.

“It is a testament to our membership, how quickly money has been raised,” Burch said.

You can visit bit.ly/NCHAAEDS to donate online.