After two heart attacks and two episodes of cardiac arrest, Derek McKenna was clinically dead when he arrived at Lovelace Heart Hospital in Downtown Albuquerque. Friday, he, and his wife Jackie McKenna went back to the hospital where he spent seven weeks in the intensive care unit to thank the people who saved his life.

“I don’t think he would have survived if we went anywhere else. I really don’t,” Jackie said.

Jackie took Derek to Lovelace Westside Hospital in November after he’d been complaining about shoulder pain. That’s where he met Emergency Physician Sharon Atencio for some tests. But things took a turn while Derek was there. He had two heart attacks and went into cardiac arrest twice. The first code lasted three minutes with Atencio performing CPR.

“The next code ran for 47 minutes. I went back and counted it,” Atencio said. “We shocked 14 times.”

Atencio and her team got him stable enough to transfer him to Lovelace Heart Hospital. Interventional Cardiologist Stacey Clegg and her team met Derek and Jackie at the doors.

“His kidneys had shut down, his liver had shut down, he was not oxygenating well,” Clegg said. “He was in cardiogenic shock.”

The put him on an ECMO machine and did not expect him to survive.

“I was more or less told that he wasn’t going to make it through the night and bring the kids up to say goodbye,” Jackie said.

But Derek put up a fight and so did his care team. Even through complications including aspiration pneumonia and a massive stomach bleed. Atencio and Clegg said they worked not only for Derek, but for Jackie too.

“She kept telling me, ‘I can’t think of my life without him,’” Atencio said.

After seven weeks in the intensive care unit, Derek defied the odds. His doctors called it a miracle. But the McKennas give all the credit to their hospital heroes.

“The right people were there at the right time and they basically were expert at what they did and if it was my time that probably wouldn’t have happened,” Derek said. “But it wasn’t my time and it’s thanks to everyone in this room.”

Derek has a Gofundme to help with medical bills. You can donate by clicking the link here.