A Manitowoc restauranteur has earned a new nickname after he overcame nearly insurmountable odds.
On March 29th, Myke Hollahan, the co-owner and head chef at Holla in Manitowoc had a sudden cardiac arrest. His wife Shannon began CPR while their son called 911, who helped talk her through the procedure.
“Then I literally heard the sirens, maybe 30 pumps later. They were so fast,” Shannon explained.
And in walked Officer Casey Clarksen, who actually delivers wood to their restaurant. He was followed by Officer Alicia Hansen and EMS, who deployed a defibrillator, which re-started Myke’s heart after it was stopped for about four minutes.
Shannon laughed at the fact that she was naked at the time, so she quickly scrambled to put on clothes while Myke was taken to BayCare for treatment. That is when he tells Seehafer News he was diagnosed with Noncompaction Cardiomyopathy.
“Which means my heart didn’t fill out and smooth out and fill out like it should in my development. I don’t know until this happened, so 50 years and ‘boop’ here you go heart disease,” he explained.
He also told us, “They gave me a defibrillator, which is different from a pacemaker. The defibrillator is basically sitting there waiting to just shock my butt if I need it. Hopefully, I never need it. I have heard a lot of stories of people who never needing it even though they had this huge event happen.”
Myke is a walking miracle as only 8% of people who have a cardiac arrest outside of the hospital survive, and of those that do, 99% suffer brain damage. Myke not only survived, Shannon says his Brain is functioning properly.
Myke said the fact that he was awake and talking when he arrived shocked the doctors and called the entire situation nothing short of a miracle, given that if the EMS had arrived even seconds later, he would not be here.
“You can’t plan that perfectly,” he said. “The way everything was so intricately timed out…I believe was a God thing.”
Myke and Shannon praised the work of their son, who called 9-1-1, the dispatcher who helped Shannon through CPR, the Police Officers who were first on the scene, the EMS team, and the doctors who all played a vital role in keeping the Hollahan patriarch alive.
The couple has also been keeping a close eye on their children, to make sure they are doing ok mentally following the traumatic experience. Myke tells us his own mental health suffered for a short while, noting he felt terrible that “the fact that they went through that, I was really really sad and heartbroken.”
However, another touch of divine intervention helped get him over the hump.
He explained that his daughter’s teacher at Bethany Lutheran told her “You are so blessed…because you got to see with your own eyes God’s miracle.” When his daughter told him that, Myke said “That completely changed it for me.”
Shannon also felt some guilt for a short time, as during CPR she broke seven of her husband’s ribs, which she did not know was common when CPR is done correctly. Myke told her “Don’t you dare for a second feel bad about breaking those ribs. I will take broken ribs every week because I’m here. Ribs can heal. If I’m dead, I’m not coming back.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up for the Hollahan family to help cover their medical expenses.
Not being one to let a little thing like a heart attack slow him down, Myke is already back on the Holla on Wheels food truck serving up delicious food, albeit on a much more limited basis.