Mark Force celebrates a year since a medical incident left him with a 1% chance to live
By Julie Gerke
The Source Newspaper
It was sunny and near 70, one of those perfect late-April days, and Mark and Sheila Force decided to drive to Jacksonville for groceries.
The Virginia couple saw each other mainly on weekends, because Mark traveled out of state during the week for his job as a construction project manager. After their trip to Walmart, meandering northward toward home, Sheila suggested they stop at a garage sale in the Westfair subdivision.
It was the last normal thing they did.
Over the next 18 days, Sheila watched as her husband died twice, was without oxygen for 12 to 13 minutes, underwent five-way heart bypass surgery, and returned to consciousness thinking he was 17 years old.
‘Oh, no’
The Forces didn’t find anything at the garage sale and weren’t in the car long when Mark, behind the wheel, said “Oh no,” and suddenly stiffened, his foot inadvertently jamming against the accelerator. Within seconds, Sheila grabbed the wheel, rubbed his visibly galloping chest, and steered the car between two houses, avoiding a fire hydrant and aiming for an above-ground swimming pool and attached deck.
The crash stopped the car, since Sheila hadn’t been able to move Mark’s foot off the gas pedal. Still trying to rouse her husband, she honked the horn for help, found her cellphone on the floor, and called her daughter as a neighbor called 911.
A police officer arrived as water sloshed over the car, filling a low spot in the yard. Firefighters from the nearby Jacksonville Fire Department substation found a visibly blue Mark, still not breathing, and the car jammed into the deck.
The firefighters, also trained as paramedics, used an AutoPulse mechanical device to provide chest compressions and used video-aided laryngoscopy to insert a tube into his throat to help push oxygen into his lungs. Mark’s heartbeat returned briefly but failed again en route to Jacksonville Memorial Hospital; eventually, doctors in Springfield told Sheila that her husband had been without oxygen for 12 to 13 minutes, and to expect the worst.
That was 2023.
Today, almost a year later, Mark is walking, talking, driving and healthy. Almost all of his memory has returned, except for the last few days before the accident, and the couple’s extended family recently celebrated birthdays and life in general with a cruise.
“It’s all good now,” Mark Force said during a recent interview. “I’ll take what I got and I’m really happy and grateful I got it.”
At age 67, he likely won’t return to work, but Sheila, 58, keeps busy with an adult home care job and granddaughter Natalie Force, 18, has moved into their house to help. Son Anthony of Virginia took time off work to help; daughter Renee Haglock of South Carolina hopped on a plane as soon as she got her mom’s call.
“The support I got from the kids was just unreal,” Sheila said. The couple’s insurance didn’t cover hospitalization, so family help, a community fundraiser and a GoFundMe effort was welcomed.
‘A rebirth’
Last month, Mark was again at Walmart when he saw a fire crew cleaning up after a medical call. He approached firefighter/paramedic Sean Taylor and mentioned he knew what it was like to be on the treatment side of a medical call.
He wanted to say thank you, so Mark, Sheila and Natalie crowded into a fire station office on April 1, sharing the story of the last year with the men who saved his life and taking group photos on the apparatus floor.
“You can see we’ve had a journey,” Mark Force said. “It’s really a rebirth.”
“You guys did the hard work,” responded Lt. Brian Gillespie. “We did the easy work.”
After her husband was transferred to a Springfield hospital, doctors told Sheila there was a 1% chance for survival for someone who stops breathing. The extended lack of oxygen brought fears of brain damage. In addition, tests revealed Mark likely had suffered a heart attack and five of his six heart arteries were clogged between 90% and 100%.
When she asked about surgery, a cardiologist gently explained bypasses aren’t done when the patient isn’t expected to regain consciousness.
It took three days before Mark responded to physical pain (a pinch, a slap on the foot) and to his daughter literally yelling to get his attention.
When he fully woke, he didn’t recognize Sheila, Renee, Anthony or Natalie and didn’t remember what happened. In Mark’s brain, he was 17. He didn’t recognize his house, didn’t realize he’d lost his parents and a child, didn’t know how to use a computer or remember the history behind a wall full of guitars.
There’s no book to help someone regain his memory, so Sheila told Mark he could ask anything and she would tell the truth, grateful today that those kernels of information spurred deeper memories.
He recovered quickly from the bypass surgery, heading home after 18 days, and Sheila marvels how fast the surgical scar faded. An internal defibrillator will shock his heart if it stops beating.
“There were so many professionals who helped Mark get where he is today,” Sheila said. “It was surely the goodness of God that lined everybody up.”
JFD Captain Mike Hopper led the substation crew on April 28, 2023. The official report says firefighter were on scene on Westfair Drive for just over 24 minutes, providing advanced life support care, helping a tow company move the car, and helping clean up the scene.
Taylor, the firefighter/paramedic who met Force at Walmart, said firefighters often don’t get a chance to talk to people after they’ve recovered from an incident. “It was happenstance that I ran into him. … Not only to get him back and save him, but … his [ability] to walk out of a hospital and have a normal life. It’s pretty exciting.”
It’s common for people, Force said, to ask what he saw when he stopped breathing: Was there a bright light, angels, a different world?
“It’s like turning off a light switch,” he tells them. “There’s a reason for that. It wasn’t my time to know that side of the story. I do believe I’m back here for a reason. There’s a reason.”
