Miracles can occur anywhere at any time. Ask Dean Woodruff. His miracle began in a cemetery three days before Christmas 2021.

“I remember when I went down I said, “God, if it’s my turn, go ahead and take me.’ I remember hearing something like, ‘I really don’t need you yet,’” Dean said with a chuckle.

A staff member of an area funeral home in his retirement, Dean was participating in a burial at a small cemetery on the northern edge of Quincy, on a blustery day last December, when he began to feel ill.

“I knew something was going wrong because my chest started to burn like crazy,” the 79-year old recalled.

The funeral service was for the father of Blessing nurse Kari Schmiedeskamp Luckhaupt. She was one of a number of people at the service who responded to Dean’s medical emergency.

“We called 9-1-1 immediately and were on the ground with Dean - holding his hand, trying to keep him warm, reassuring him that help was coming and monitoring his condition until first responders arrived,” Kari stated. 

It was the first time the 21-year veteran of the Blessing nursing staff had responded to a heart attack outside the walls of the hospital.

“It’s a lot different being in that kind of situation versus being in the hospital,” she said.

Board certified Blessing cardiologist Jeffrey Cook, MD, is Dean’s heart doctor. He says a blood clot that had developed inside of Dean’s heart, at the site of another heart attack he experienced in the 1990s, moved.

“Sometimes this happens immediately, but 30 years later it is unheard of,” said Dr. Cook. “On December 22 that blood clot ejected out of his heart cavity and went into his left main heart artery causing a massive heart attack.”

Blockage of the left main artery is known as a “widowmaker” heart attack because, according to the American Heart Association, the survival rate following a widowmaker heart attack is only 12% when it occurs outside of a hospital or advanced care center.

Miraculously Dean survived, in part due to complex and aggressive treatment of his blood clot at Blessing, requiring injections of different medications inside the artery to dissolve the clot.

“One in 500 cases do we have to do that,” Dr. Cook added. “It’s very rare.”

While Dean’s heart sustained damage, the doctor says Dean is fortunate the blood clot did not reach his brain and cause damage there.

Another part of this miracle.

“I don’t remember anything for three days, which was Christmas morning. I had a Merry Christmas. I woke up,” Dean said, again with a chuckle. He was hospitalized for a total of 14 days, some of those days on a ventilator.

“The people of the Blessing Hospital cardiovascular unit were fantastic,” said Dean’s wife of 25 years, Sue. “He does not remember those first three days, but I do. They were very scary. The nurses, when they are sitting right in the room, controlling everything that is beeping and going, the things they do all at one time - it’s amazing.”

Dean is beloved and well known in the community, and across the country. He was a science teacher and basketball and football coach in the Mendon, IL, school district.

“We heard from former players from all over who had moved away, talking about how Dean would never lose a ball game because he was so stubborn and always wanted to win every game,” Sue recalled. “They said, ‘Just tell him he needs to win this one. Take the ball to the hole and win the game,’ things he used to tell them when the game was on the line. I tell you, that’s what held us together, all those people in our community and beyond sending all those wishes and praying.”

Those people include several of his Blessing nurses, including Kari, who were students of Dean’s over the years.

“All that they did for me, I am greatly, greatly appreciative,” he stated.

Learn more about Blessing's Heart and Vascular services here.