By a stroke of good fortune, Ilana Bank is not lactose intolerant.
After driving her two kids and their friends for some ice cream and initially balking at the idea of getting some for herself, she inexplicably backed down and decided to grab a cone at La Diperie on Monkland Ave.
Bank never did get any ice cream that day. Fate was to intervene.
No sooner had Bank been about to enter the ice cream parlour, one of the owners asked her for help after a man had collapsed inside. And by a stroke of even better fortune, Bank just happens to be an emergency-room physician at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and was to spend the ensuing minutes on the floor straddling the man, doing compressions and pounding his chest so vigorously that she probably broke a few of his ribs in the process.
It turns out that the man, Lawrence Cohen, a 69-year-old audio/TV technician, had suffered a cardiac arrest. Bank worked on him for about seven minutes until Urgences-santé personnel arrived and took over.
Cohen, with no discernible pulse and not breathing, was considered to have been clinically dead for just over 12 minutes before finally showing signs of life.
“Total serendipity,” Cohen marvels. “It doesn’t get much more lucky than that. Ilana saved my life. I was told if she had arrived even a minute later, I would have likely been gone for good.”
That intervention took place nearly two years ago. Cohen hadn’t returned to La Diperie since. So this week he decided it was time to touch base with Bank and La Diperie’s operators, Doug Ayoub and his wife, Vicky Pappas — both of whom were left traumatized by the event — and to learn what had transpired that day.
“I wasn’t traumatized because I had no recollection at all what happened,” Cohen says. “I had no memory of that or even events that had taken place a month previous. I since learned that I was lucky not only to be alive, but to have any kind of brain function at all with my heart having stopped for so long. They say I should have some lottery tickets. But I won the biggest lottery of them all.”
Cohen had gone to La Diperie that fateful day to check on a job he did on the shop’s sound system. Cohen has been installing sound and TV systems for corporate clients for decades. When time permits, he also hooks up smart TVs and sound systems at the homes of not-so-smart Luddites — like myself.
What’s striking about Cohen is that while clients can lose their minds and elevate their blood pressure dangerously trying to comprehend the intricacies of technology, he always comes across so chill and laid back.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” the grinning Cohen says inside La Diperie.
Although once an avid runner and racquetball enthusiast, he had suffered a heart attack and underwent a quintuple bypass more than 15 years ago. Heart issues had figured prominently in his family.
“I think I’m seeing a ghost when I see him now,” Ayoub says. “I had been talking to him at the counter about my sound system when he collapsed and fell to the floor. The shop was full of customers at the time. It was chaos. Then Dr. Bank showed up … it was nothing short of miraculous that she was able to work on him and help bring him back.”
After calling 911, Ayoub and Pappas had then proceeded to clear their parlour of customers and lock the doors. The couple was so shaken by what happened that their doors remained locked for the rest of the day.
“It was a life-changing experience for me and Vicky,” Ayoub says.
Bank still recalls events as if they were this week.
“I had four boys in my car, my two sons and their two friends, and gave them money to get ice cream,” she recalls. “They came back to the car and, on a whim, because I rarely want ice cream, I decided I had to have some, too. So as I walked up the stairs to La Diperie, one of the owners (Pappas) was outside asking if there was any medical person around. She had seen me once before in my scrubs, so she knew I was medical and told me someone had collapsed.
“Lawrence was grey at first. He wasn’t breathing. I tried to flatten him out. I went to feel for a pulse. When I wasn’t feeling anything, I just straddled by his side and started doing compressions. My adrenalin was running. I had no idea of the time involved. So I just kept going. And after the firemen and Urgences-santé techs showed up and put the AED (defibrillator) pads on him, they took over. They shocked him once and then again, but nothing changed so they restarted doing compressions.”
Bank then left because she had four kids in her car who had no idea what was happening. Two weeks later and fearing the worst, Bank called La Diperie.
“I knew there was an exceedingly low chance of survival — less than one per cent — without a hospital around,” she says. “So I had assumed that he had passed. When I called, (Ayoub) answered and told me. ‘Oh my God, he’s alive!’ I screamed. ‘No way he’s still alive!’ I was pretty shocked by it all, but I’m so thrilled he made it.
“In going over events again, I realized that the only way you can tell if you’re doing effective chest compressions is if the patient’s colour turns pink. Which it did. I was pushing so hard and I’m pretty sure I broke some ribs.”
But Bank downplays her efforts here.
“It’s not because I’m a doctor. I just knew how to do chest compressions well. Anyone could have done what I did. In this situation, I was no different than a lay person. I had no hospital team behind me. My point is that everyone should learn how to do proper CPR to save others. That’s what matters.”
Having defibrillators around also helps.
Cohen can only remember waking up from his coma 10 days later.
“The doctors and nurses at the Glen (MUHC) were amazing, and although I have no memory, so obviously were the ambulance techs and Ilana,” he says. “My neurologist told me less than one per cent of people survive this, then said that chances of having brain function on top of that were far more infinitesimal.”
Cohen has pretty much recovered from his ordeal and is working again.
“This has changed my life,” Cohen says. “I’m no longer sweating the small stuff.”
“We all get lost in the minutiae of our lives,” Bank adds. “But we need to have an appreciation for the bigger picture. And enjoy the moment.”
“I’m not a religious man,” Cohen says. “But maybe karma might have played a role here. When I was 13, I happened to be out on a lake and saw a young girl who was drowning. So I went out on a raft and saved her. I never thought more about that until my incident. You never know what life has in store for you.”