Andrew Wollowitz, a director of emergency medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, was sitting in the audience and realized something was terribly wrong about 10 minutes into a recent performance. Find out how he saved a 22 year old dancer’s life after the jump.
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“Stop the show!†the doctor recalled someone shouting at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. “Call 911!â€
Wollowitz rushed to the stage from the fifth row of the darkened theater and checked for the man’s pulse. He was astounded when he found none.
“He wasn’t alive, so I started compressions — 80 to 100 a minute,†Wollowitz said, describing the near tragedy on April 19.
The heroic doc was able to rouse the 6-foot athletic dancer briefly, only to watch him fade again after taking a few breaths on his own.
With the rest of the dance troupe and about 135 patrons holding their collective breath, Wollowitz worked feverishly doing CPR for about five minutes until firefighters arrived.
The Bravest used a defibrillator at the W. 37th St. theater to shock the dancer’s heart.
A minute or two more with reduced levels of oxygen might have meant severe brain damage for the young man, said Wollowitz, 54.
Paramedics appeared a short time later, and prepped him for a ride to Bellevue Hospital across town, where he spent five nights.
The Manhattanite, who has been dancing since he was 13 and had never been ill before, asked that the Daily News withhold his name.
He is a recent graduate of SUNY Purchase, where Wollowitz’s wife taught him modern dance.
While Wollowitz could have called it a night and returned to his Westchester home, his big-heartedness didn’t end there. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he rode in the ambulance to Bellevue where he could then advocate for his patient.
Good thing, as the paramedics — who didn’t witness the initial minutes — told the triage nurse the dancer had had a seizure, not that he was in cardiac arrest.
“I would never have abandoned him, even if he wasn’t my wife’s former student,†said Wollowitz, a father of two who has been an emergency room doctor at Montefiore for 13 years.
Wollowitz said he received a personal thank-you note from Mikhail Baryshnikov, the famous dancer who opened the arts center in 2005.
In an interview with The News, the dancer said he had no idea what happened until his fellow dancers and mom told him when he awoke at Bellevue.
“I was running back upstage and doing a handstand, then from there, I don’t remember what happened,†he said. “I didn’t feel anything. The next thing I knew was I was in the hospital.â€
Doctors think he suffered a rare arrhythmia, which is more prevalent among young athletic men and women than previously believed.
It’s estimated that 2,000 people under the age of 25 die from sudden cardiac arrest in the U.S. every year.
“I feel very grateful he was in the audience,†said the dancer. “I don’t know where I’d be if he wasn’t there.â€
