Three days after finishing the Blue Nose half marathon, runner Shawn Quigley received his medal — again.
The 37-year-old completed the 21.1-kilometre run and collapsed shortly after crossing the finishing line.
Quigley says that’s where his memory gets fuzzy.
“I saw the finish line about 500 metres out and so I started sprinting to get the best time I could,” said Quigley.
“That’s when everything went black and I passed out.”
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Quigley believes he walked through a crowd of racers and received his medal, and that’s when he collapsed along the sidewalk outside of the Scotiabank Centre where runners were gathering post-race.
For now, Quigley remains in the hospital awaiting the results of an MRI and will undergo further stress tests on his heart. He says doctors aren’t fully aware of what happened, nor has he been given a diagnosis.
Instead, he’s just happy to be alive.
“The only reason why I am here is the three bystanders that sprung into action, literally seconds after seeing me collapse,” said Quigley.
Lorri Giffin was running as a volunteer pace runner and finished just a few minutes ahead of Quigley. She says she was in the crowd at the finishing line, delivering congratulatory high fives when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Quigley lying on the ground.
She thought he was having a seizure.
“Within a couple seconds of us all arriving there (beside Quigley), we established that he didn’t have a pulse, and he wasn’t breathing and so we started CPR,” said Giffin, who is also a nurse practitioner.
Giffin jumped in to help, as well as emergency room physician Tanya Monroe, who just happened to be volunteering as a pace runner and finished ahead of Quigley.
Runner Taylor Cormier, who had just finished the half marathon, also jumped in to help deliver CPR while the group waited for paramedics to arrive with a defibrillator.
Giffin says it was a tense six minutes.
“The longer the time passed, the more worried we all were. Even though we didn’t speak, we all had our tasks to do,” said Giffin.
“We really worried the outcome would be poor.”
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Paramedics rushed Quigley to the hospital, where he was given two more shocks from the AED device.
At the hospital, doctor Edwin Bamwoya, the resident cardiologist, said that the timely and high-quality CPR and availability of a defibrillator were the two most important factors to ensuring Quigley’s survival.
“A good portion of cardiac arrests that happen outside of health-care settings, people are unlikely to survive,” said Giffin. “When folks do survive, often they are left with great disability from the period of time they don’t have blood flow to the brain.”
Quigley knows he’s lucky, and on Wednesday morning Blue Nose race officials presented him with the medal he lost, along with some flowers and promised if he was able to race again next year, they would cover his registration costs.
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Quigley says this experience has only made him want to be healthier and says if doctors allow him, he’ll run the full marathon next year.
Giiffin was able to visit Quigley in his hospital room on Wednesday, and it was emotional for both.
“It means the world to me,” said Quigley after meeting his hero. “It was absolutely fantastic that Lorri was able to come down here and talk to me. And she said it herself, she wanted to see what happened as well.”
Giffin agreed it was important to see Quigley after she thought the worst.
“I was just grateful to have played a small role, and to see him healthy and walking around with his partner and with a full recovery was just incredibly fulfilling,” she said.