LE ROY — Matt Thomsen is entering his 31st and final year in education with a renewed outlook on life.
Colors are brighter. Food tastes sweeter. Songs sound more vivid.
Trivial problems that may have bothered Thomsen in his younger years, no longer matter as much.
Coming back from the dead does that to a person.
Thomsen, 55, suffered a cardiac arrest at his home in Burlington April 9.
“I was dead,” he said. “My heart had stopped. Somehow, someway, they revived me.”
Thomsen — who serves as superintendent of schools and elementary school principal for Southern Coffey County USD 245 — has no memory of the episode, or the days that followed.
Still, he understands quite well the twists of fate that saved his life, and even had him back at work less than two weeks later.
“I have about a three-week period of my life that I can’t remember,” he said. “That part of my life is gone. But I’m doing good now. The doctors call me a miracle.”
THE NIGHT of April 9 was like any other.
Thomsen and wife Mandy were getting ready for bed when she noticed Thomsen was acting just a bit odd.
“She thought I was messing around at first, because I can be kind of a goof-off,” he chuckled.
But as he collapsed to the floor, she realized it was no act, and called 911.
The first domino to saving his life — and likely the most crucial — was Thomsen’s address.
That’s because he counts among his neighbors Jesse Presley, who serves as director of the Coffey County EMS program.
“It was less than 3 minutes after she called when he was doing CPR on me,” he said. “If he wasn’t there that quickly, then I wouldn’t be here now, because my wife wasn’t strong enough to move me.”
