Commercial Motor Vehicle Enforcement Officer's Daughter Saves His Life

By Officer Jimmy Valenti, Commercial Motor Vehicle Enforcement, Cedar Hill Police Department, Texas

My name is Jimmy Valenti and I am a commercial motor vehicle enforcement officer for the Cedar Hill Police Department in Texas. This is an article explaining an unfortunate event that happened to me that drives home the importance of everyone learning CPR.

On Sept. 30, I came home from work, and while cutting the grass in my backyard, I inadvertently ran over a nest of yellowjackets and was stung multiple times on my neck and ear. I am highly allergic to wasps and yellowjackets.

I notified my wife. Within minutes, I started to feel very weird. I ran into the house and grabbed two of my EpiPens® and administered one. Before I could administer the second, I felt my life slipping away. I threw the remaining EpiPen to my wife, telling her to call 911 because I was dying. I then fell to the ground and went into anaphylactic shock and cardiac arrest.

My adult daughter immediately started CPR as my wife called 911. An unknown 911 dispatcher talked my wife and daughter through the proper CPR procedure and dispatched Mansfield Fire Station 1 C shift to my residence. By the time medics arrived, my daughter had been giving me CPR for several minutes. I was still in full cardiac arrest and was not breathing. Medics worked on me for a while, having to restart my heart and intubate me prior to rushing me to Mansfield Methodist Hospital.

Upon arriving at the hospital, my heart was beating but I was in critical condition. The emergency room trauma team stabilized me and brought me to the intensive care unit, where that trauma team had to place me in therapeutic hypothermia for 72 hours in hopes of saving my brain functions and life. I spent four days in that state and woke up on Oct. 4. I remained in the hospital for 11 days and received at-home care for several months before returning to work on light duty where I remain at the time of this article.

I am still recovering from this incident and have a long road ahead, but I want to stress that if it was not for my daughter Nicole and her ability to perform out-of-hospital CPR, and the quick actions of my wife Madonna, I would not have survived until the medics arrived. I also would not be alive today without the help of the anonymous 911 dispatcher, Mansfield Fire Station 1 C Shift medics and the dedicated staff at Mansfield Methodist Hospital.

Nicole's CPR efforts saved my life. Doctors have told me that I had a 2-9% chance of surviving this incident. After beating the survival odds, 60% of patients who live through what I did experience permanent brain damage. If not for out-of-hospital CPR, I would not be here today. I owe my life to God and to all of the people who came together to save me that day. Please take a CPR course. You too could save a life, just like mine.