STOCKTON — Fire Capt. Erik Patten has been given a precious gift — his life.
“It’s not until you get faced with something like this that you learn how important family is — and not only my ‘family family’ but my ‘fire family.’ It’s the same way we treat the entire Stockton community,” Patten said Monday, his first day back on the job following 15 weeks away to recover from a near-fatal medical emergency.
It was the first week of January and Patten, 43 and a 16-year veteran of the Stockton Fire Department, was three days into preparing for an upcoming academy class of new recruits as the department’s training captain.
He wasn’t feeling good, but he went to work anyway. Then his condition got the better of him.
What he felt was a dull pain in the middle of his chest. His wife picked him up and drove him to Dameron Hospital, where he was initially treated as if he had experienced a heart attack. Further tests showed it was more than that, so he was airlifted to the Bay Area and ended up at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center, where he was rushed into surgery.
“The last faces I saw when I left Stockton were my family and my fire family,” Patten recalled, not knowing what would lie ahead.
Patten had been diagnosed with a dissecting aorta — an extremely serious and rare condition in which the inner layer of the largest blood vessel coming off the heart tears, allowing blood to leak out. It is often a fatal condition, and in Patten’s case, it came on without warning.
Reveling at the work of the UCSF surgeons to replace his damaged aorta with one made of Dacron, Patten described how, during his eight-hour operation, he spent 63 minutes on bypass, during which his blood circulated only through his brain, not his heart.
Seeing him back in a firehouse on Monday, a stranger would have no idea what the physically fit Patten had been through.
“It’s changed my outlook on everything, being on the patient side,” said Patten, who has had extensive emergency medical training and responded to countless medical aid calls during which all his skills have been tested.
“I’m usually on the caregiving side. This experience has really been eye-opening. It’s going to help me with my patient care.” Patten also believed having been on the receiving end of such a traumatic experience will benefit him as a trainer.
During the entire time he was off work, Patten also learned just how tight his relationship is with fellow firefighters.
In the eight days he was at UCSF, more than 100 Stockton firefighters and their families visited him. Many helped Patten’s wife and children deal with the stressful situation they found themselves in.
“That’s been incredible. This department especially is a family; it showed when this happened. They were there to take care of my family in San Francisco and at home, bringing food every night. They fixed up a bed for me in my home downstairs since I had trouble climbing stairs.
“I can never thank them enough for that,” Patten said. “Life is very precious and short. And I’m very lucky to be here.”
— Contact reporter Joe Goldeen at (209) 546-8278 or [email protected]. Follow him at recordnet.com/goldeenblog and on Twitter @JoeGoldeen.
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