Firefighter, whose heart stopped several times, shares miraculous survival story from hospital bed

A volunteer firefighter was helping fight a blaze in Blaine County at the end of March when medics thought he may have breathed in too much smoke. It turned out to be much more serious than that.

Ty Gardner with the Loyal Fire Department had a heart attack and then had more complications. Now, he tells the story of his survival from his hospital.

"I feel much better. That right there is about all I got left," Ty said, showing tubes still connected to his body. "That should be out this afternoon—it’s a swan line.”

Considering he had a breathing tube last week and his heart stopped several times, Ty said he is feeling pretty good, despite having to spend Easter weekend in the hospital.

"From what I understand, we got to (highways) 33 and 81 when they hooked a 12-lead onto me and found out that I was pretty much dead," Ty said.

Ty's brother spoke to KOCO 5 after he was hospitalized, saying Ty battled the Hitchcock Fire in Blaine County. He decided to get checked out by medics because he thought he had smoke inhalation. It turned out to be a heart attack.

"They’re thinking three or four times they had to resuscitate me before I was actually back," Ty said. "David Macy was there at the right place and right time.”

Macy is the deputy director of operations for Pafford Medical Services in the Western Oklahoma Region, and he is the one who made Ty head to the hospital before the situation got even more serious.

Medics did an EKG on him in the ambulance, and then when he got to that hospital, he went unresponsive and suffered what the doctors said was sudden cardiac death.

He took another round of shocks and CPR in the emergency room before he was flown to Oklahoma City.

"He lost a lot of blood, and they ended up having to re-intubate him and do a little CPR. His heart stopped again. They got him back again," Tracy Gardner, Ty's brother and a captain with the Loyal Fire Department, said.

Then there was a malfunction with an ECMO machine that Ty was hooked up to. Medical staff revived him.

"I don’t remember anything from the time I climbed in the back of the ambulance until I woke up in this bed," Ty said. "It was probably about four days."

Ty told KOCO that he hopes to be discharged in about a week, but it could take longer than that.

Donation accounts have been set up at Community State Banks in Hennessey, Dover and Cashion under Hennessey Community Action Team for Ty Gardner.

Donors can also go to any BancFirst and donate to an account called "Tracy Gardner FBO Ty Gardner."