Heart survivor living on a remote Christmas tree farm bought an AED. His family saved him with it.

Once their three children became adults, Michael and Jill Loughran moved from Stowe, Vermont, to a rural town about an hour away – more specifically, to a 300-acre spread that used to be a wholesale Christmas tree farm.

Before semi-retiring, Michael had been the operations manager at his family's industrial engineering company in Philadelphia. Once he moved to the farm in 2021, he decided to give tree growing a whirl.

Over the course of 10 days in November 2023, Michael and two younger farmhands cut down around 4,000 trees. So he could justify feeling tired.

Meanwhile, his home blood pressure monitor indicated an irregular heartbeat. This he blamed on a faulty device. However, during a visit from his daughter Sophie – then a nursing student – he mentioned the skipped beats to her.

"You should probably get that checked out," she said.

Tests confirmed the irregular heartbeat as well as an elevated level of troponin, a protein complex that can imply heart problems. Yet it took months to learn the source of it all: five blocked arteries.

In March 2024, Michael – then 56 – underwent quadruple bypass surgery. The open-heart operation reroutes the blood around the blockages with vessels taken from other parts of the body.

"I got my plumbing fixed and I felt more confident in my longevity compared to someone who hasn't had a tuneup," he said.

Cardiac rehabilitation gave him the confidence to return to his active lifestyle. He also changed his eating habits, cutting back on sodium and processed foods, and largely following the DASH diet, short for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.

Along the way, Michael took another precautionary move. Because the farm is so remote – the town has no paved roads – he bought an automated external defibrillator, or AED, a device that can help restart a heart that has stopped due to cardiac arrest.

By October, Sophie had earned her nursing degree and was working in the cardiac intensive care unit of a hospital in Denver. She had a string of five days off and decided to visit her parents and see the Northern Lights.

On her third night there, she was in a deep sleep when she awoke to her mother screaming for her.

Jill had been awakened by the sound of Michael gasping for air. She was on the phone with 911 when Sophie arrived in her room.

The two women managed to place Michael on the floor. Sophie started chest compressions while Jill ran to get the AED. They traded off the role of delivering shocks and compressions. They were also able to get the farmhands to help with the rescue attempt.

It took the ambulance 35 minutes to arrive at their house in Stannard. By then, Michael had received three shocks from the AED and continuous CPR, and he had a faint pulse.

At the hospital, doctors stabilized Michael. They warned Jill and Sophie that he might have neurological impairment from a lack of oxygen during those 35 minutes.

When Michael woke up later that day, he couldn't see and had amnesia. But within 24 hours, those issues faded away. He had no detectable physical or cognitive deficits.

Doctors said that ventricular fibrillation brought on Michael's cardiac arrest. The abnormal heart rhythm is due to disorganized electrical activity that prevents the heart from pumping blood effectively. Doctors could find no cause for it.

As a precaution, they put an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, or ICD, in Michael's chest. The device records and transmits data for remote monitoring, and if the device detects an abnormal heart rhythm, it can deliver a shock.

"The doctors told me it was a freak electrical issue," Michael said. "Now I've gotten my plumbing and electrical fixed. Plus, I'm being monitored remotely, so if anything goes wrong, they'll know it."

Six weeks after the cardiac arrest, Michael was back to work on the farm, but he left cutting down trees to his crew. Then he went to Colorado to visit Sophie and spent time on the slopes.

"He wanted to go skiing immediately," she said. "But I told him he had to wait a few days until he acclimated to the elevation."

Stories From the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers and advocates.