My friend Eric Rothenberg is 42. Given that I am writing this on my 59th birthday, I see Eric as a very young man. Married, twin 14-year-old boys. Great wife, Edith, who I love and see at the gym at our little Mercer Island Country Club most days. The club is no deluxe place. A few workout rooms, a pool, tennis courts.

But it is a community. And that community saved Eric’s life last Thursday night.

Friday morning at 6 am another regular at the gym told me the story. Eric participated in the Thursday night men’s tennis league. He doesn’t always go, but he decided to go this night. He enjoys the camaraderie. Eric is a great guy to pal around with. During play at about 10:15 at night, Eric felt weak. He dropped to his knees and then his face hit the floor of the indoor tennis court. Eric’s heart apparently was suddenly beating wildly -250 beats a minute – but not pumping blood effectively. This is what sudden death can look like.

Two doctors happened to be playing tennis there too. They came running and immediately started CPR. Someone ran to call 911 and someone else ran to get the club’s portable automatic defibrillator. The doctors immediately put it to use. Soon the EMT’s came. Eric was still “out”. The doctors thought he was dying and they would not be able to bring him back. But they kept trying. Eric was “zapped” four times. The efforts that began almost as he fell, in the ambulance, and in the emergency room worked. Starting with his tennis buddies and the people on the next court, Eric’s life was saved. And the ready technology of the automatic defibrillator, now at schools and shopping centers and on planes and so many other places, played a key role.

Eric’s wife Edith told me it was just chance that Eric was at the club that night. What if this had happened at home?

We can guess. It turns out only 5% of people with such an arrhythmia survive. Eric was a lucky, lucky boy. And I told him that when I saw him in his hospital room yesterday. He looked good, on meds, and being monitored closely. Today he had a tiny defibrillator implanted under the skin on his upper chest. That now stands ready should his heart’s electrical system go haywire again.

All this has happened during the Jewish “Days of Awe.” These are the few days in the Fall between the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah and the Day of Atonement called Yom Kippur. Jews believe this is the time when God is reviewing human lives and determining “who shall live and who shall die” over the next year. When I spoke to Eric yesterday we recalled that and he is beginning to understand that this just wasn’t his time to go. I told him my cancer diagnosis had changed me. That surviving leukemia had made me think about my “second life” and that his survival of what for so many others is sudden death might send him in a new direction too. Eric, always the comedian, joked he might use his marketing skills and go to work for a defibrillator company. Maybe not such a bad idea. If he can promote more availability of such devices maybe there will be more lives saved. More Erics.

I’ve mentioned Eric’s saga on Facebook and how the Mercer Island Country Club (MICC) having an automatic defibrillator was key. People who know me and Eric have commented. But today, from his hospital room, Eric commented too. I thought it was the best way to end this blog:

“The marketing guy in me wants to say that’s another good reason to join the MICC… The rest of me wants to thank everyone – friends and strangers – from the bottom, top, left, right, front, and back of my heart.”

Update from Eric:

One point of clarification that I learned last night from the guys who did the CPR… They said when they got to me, not 30 seconds after I went down, I had no pulse and wasn’t breathing – that’s when/why they started CPR. They kept blood flowing and then the defibrillator brought me back, but apparently I was then in v-tach in the ambulance with 250 heart rate…