My Turn: Living my 'second life' with gratitude

At 82 years old, I just celebrated the 10th anniversary of my death and restart.

On Sept. 21, 2012, I attended a lecture at the United Nations in Manhattan. When the speaker finished, I stood up, quietly applauded and together with the audience, walked outside. On First Avenue and 44th Street, I collapsed and fell backward, the victim of sudden onset cardiac arrest.

I hit my head on the concrete sidewalk and had a small bleed. But the more pressing problem: I was not breathing. I had no pulse. It was a question of life and death.

Lucky for me, two Secret Service agents assigned to the United Nations were outside of the building to grab a brown-bag lunch. They immediately reacted, seeking to save my life with CPR. The speed of the application of CPR may have saved me, but it did not restore my breath or my pulse.

Within minutes, a unit of FDNY emergency medical service pulled its vehicle onto the sidewalk. They jumped out and shocked my heart with an electric defibrillator. No response.

The leader of the crew, Byron Melo, found me "in need of revival" and on the street stuck a hypodermic needle in my arm to inject something to help revive me.

Again, I did not respond.

They put me into the back of the little red truck and took me to the nearby emergency room of NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue.

The doctors there — not aware that I was a 1950s Bensonhurst kid or of the immediate CPR I had received — gave me a small chance of recovery.

With permission from my wife, Michelle, they put me into an induced coma, telling her that if I were to wake up, “it would be in 48 to 72 hours.”

Michelle adopted a confident outlook and spoke to the comatose me softly about the many things we had not yet done and which remained to be achieved. She had our son-in-law, Scott, a trained engineer, arrange to pipe in the songs of Frank Sinatra (my favorite).

I woke up in 44 hours, completely unaware of what had happened to me. I irrationally insisted that I be discharged.

Calmer minds prevailed, and I stayed overnight and then another day or two. A heart monitor was implanted in me. I was then released and instructed to go home to live a normal life with physical therapy first at St. Francis Hospital in Flower Hill, near to our home.

The nun in charge of the physical therapy program at St. Francis read my chart and commented, "You were quite fortunate."

Indeed, I was. I believe in God. I have always believed in God, but my vision of God has never been of one who intervenes in specific events on Earth. "God blessed" applies to all of us, I believe.

This is the message I write to share. Without regard to the specifics of difficult challenges we may face, we should not give up. Nothing is gained by abandoning faith and hope. We can overcome. History is our guide. Hope is the last to die.

D. David Cohen,

Port Washington