When Kelly Dwyer stands at the Boston Marathon starting line on Monday morning with her Boston MedFlight bib, she’ll smile and think of her mother, Terry Sullivan.
Sullivan will be cheering for her daughter on the course in Wellesley, and she’ll be waiting to embrace her at the finish line. If not for a harrowing medical transport two years ago, that wouldn’t be the case.
“MedFlight is the reason why she’s still here,” Dwyer said.
Sullivan suffered a cardiac event in 2023 and spent five and a half weeks in a coma. A transport from Brockton to Tufts Medical Center in Boston proved critical in saving Sullivan’s life.
On Monday, Dwyer will be one of over 3,000 charity runners in the Boston Marathon field. They’ve raised over $40 million for non-profits, and Dwyer’s cause couldn’t be closer to her heart.
‘Out of the blue’
It started out as a run-of-the mill January morning.
A pair of Sullivan’s grandkids had slept over at her Abington home after a soccer game the night before. Drinking a cup of coffee next to her then-7-year-old grandson, Brody Dwyer, Sullivan felt a mild chest pain.
Her husband, Michael, noticed she hadn’t looked quite herself when she came down the stairs. Then she began to perspire. Having coffee on the couch is the last thing Sullivan remembers from that day. She lost consciousness and didn’t wake up for five and a half weeks.
Sullivan’s heart had stopped pumping blood and she went into cardiac arrest.
Just 63 at the time, Sullivan thought she’d been in good health. The previous weekend she’d babysat four grandkids alone while her husband and sons went on a trip.
“Happened out of the blue,” Sullivan said.
Brody Dwyer bolted to get help for his grandmother, and Michael Sullivan and their son, James Sullivan, performed CPR on her until paramedics arrived. She was rushed to a Brockton hospital, where doctors surgically implanted a stent into her heart. That didn’t stabilize her, however, and things were getting even more dire.
Sullivan’s condition required getting her to a trauma center with more resources quickly. But in windy, icy conditions, it was too dangerous for a helicopter. So Sullivan traveled the 20 miles to Tufts Medical Center via MedFlight ground transport. The company’s signature silver ambulances are essentially mobile intensive care units. They’re armed with more technology and resources than their standard counterparts, and staffed with a highly trained critical care nurse and critical care paramedic.
A friend with MedFlight assured Dwyer that once her mother was wheeled onto the transport, it was like she was already at Tufts.
“The reality is that it wouldn’t have been safe for her to have been transported by (regular ambulance) from Brockton to Boston. She wouldn’t have survived,” Dwyer said. “Their training is different, their skills are different, their equipment is different.”
With the care she desperately needed, Sullivan’s condition stabilized and she made it to Boston where she spent over a month in a coma.
Those were long days for everybody in her family, from her husband, to her children, to her grandkids. There was suddenly a great void in their lives.
“She’s the type of person that when you need her, it doesn’t matter what time, you call and she’s there,” Dwyer said. “That’s who she is. No questions asked. She’s your biggest cheerleader and your biggest support.”
Dwyer spent almost 10 years in the Army National Guard, and got engaged right before a deployment. While she was away, Sullivan handled the heavy lifting with planning her daughter’s wedding. When Dwyer had kids, her mother was a constant in their lives.
“She’s everything,” Dwyer said. “I’ve always realized and appreciated everything my mom has done for me over the years, but you don’t truly, truly feel the depth of what they’ve done for you until something happens. I definitely have a deeper appreciation for her — and I’ve always appreciated her… life is short and things can happen, but there’s definitely a different perspective you have when something like that happens.”
‘It’s like a miracle’
After over a month at Tufts, Sullivan woke from her coma.
“It’s really strange,” Sullivan said. “I didn’t know what happened to me. I knew I was in a hospital, but I didn’t realize I was in a Boston hospital. I had no idea what had happened to me.”
Eventually, she learned all that she’d gone through. At Tufts, she’d undergone multiple surgeries, including an ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation), an artificial life-support device that allows the heart to rest and heal while pumping blood for it.
“It is amazing. The doctors, it’s like a miracle,” Sullivan said. “To be able to do everything that I’m doing is a miracle, but it’s with the help of everyone, the chain of getting me there to the hospital and my family and my grand babies. Everybody kind of stayed around by my bedside. I believe that you can feel that, you know?”
A challenging road to recovery still lay ahead. After coming out of the coma, Sullivan couldn’t stand. She needed to learn how to walk again. When she moved to Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, she circled a goal on her calendar: Her grandson Brody Dwyer’s First Communion later that spring.
“I wanted to be there and I wanted to be able to walk,” Sullivan said. “So every day I just took one step forward and just kept plugging away.”
It’s been a remarkable recovery.
“I’ve met all the people that had a hand in people keeping my mom alive and with us and healthy, but I feel like I need to do something more than just say thank you,” Dwyer said.
Fortunately, Boston MedFlight was able to provide a little help there, too.
‘Can’t say thank you enough’
Dwyer has run the Boston Marathon once before.
In 2019, she was a charity runner for the Joslin Diabetes Center. Awed by the “bananas” crowd reaction all morning, it wasn’t until after the race that she discovered she’d been running alongside a Patriots legend for most of the race.
“My brothers, when I finished, they were like, ‘You were running next to Tedy Bruschi the whole time! You had no idea! Are you kidding me?’” Dwyer said. “Oh man, I did not. It’s not like I was looking for him. I didn’t know I was right next to him.”
The 129th Boston Marathon will be the first that Boston MedFlight has bibs for the race. A nonprofit, they’ll have a group of five charity runners in Hopkinton. When Dwyer heard they’d have a team this year, she jumped at the chance to run for them. Her mother can’t wait to see it.
“It’s going to be awesome,” Sullivan said. “It’s exciting. I’m so happy and thrilled that she’s able to do this and wanted to do it to give back.”
MedFlight’s fundraising money from the Marathon will go to lifesaving equipment, training, and underinsured patients. Since its inception, MedFlight has transported over 100,000 New Englanders like Sullivan.
“As a nonprofit, we provide an average of $7 million annually in free or unreimbursed care,” said Erin Erban, MedFlight’s director of communications. “We’re entirely committed to ensuring that patients receive the care they need regardless of their ability to pay. That’s why we’re so grateful for this group of runners and their efforts to raise funds that support the incredibly high-quality, safe critical care transport we provide every single day.”
It’s been a little more than two years since Sullivan woke up after her cardiac event. That’s two more years making memories with those most important to her, and Sullivan isn’t taking a second for granted.
“I’ve gotta tell you, I never would have thought that MedFlight would play a part in my life,” Sullivan said. “I just can’t be thankful enough for what they did for me. I know that had they not transported me into Boston, I wouldn’t be sitting here today. I would not have enjoyed everything that has come after my cardiac arrest.”
If you’d like to support Kelly Dwyer’s run for Boston MedFlight, you can find her fundraising page here.
