Kristie Pellitteri remembers it vividly. When her heart stopped during her ambulance ride to St. Anthony Hospital Lakewood, Pellitteri felt her brain switch off as she went somewhere comfortable and calm.
“I saw the golden light. I felt very relaxed and let go, and came back on the operating table,” she said. “It was really kind of incredible, because I do remember just answering and nodding to questions they were asking me, and just staying super calm and making it through.”
Meanwhile, Pellitteri’s body was experiencing something entirely different. After Pellitteri suffered a pulmonary embolism and cardiac arrest at home, an EMS team restarted her heart as it stopped en route to St. Anthony, where Pellitteri went through another cardiac arrest and was kept afloat with a cutting-edge medical support system.
“I'm still in shock and awe, and it's unbelievable to me that I'm sitting here today alive, having died and come back, and then just meeting all the people that were involved with my case: doctors, nurses, the Clear Creek EMS that got me there, my husband that started it all as a first responder,” Pellitteri said.
Thanks to the coordination of carefully-assembled medical teams at CommonSpirit’s St. Anthony Hospital Lakewood, Pellitteri was able to not only survive a pulmonary embolism and a stopped heart, but start on a remarkable road to recovery.
Seeking Help Saves a Life
Pellitteri leads a busy, but centered life. The massage therapist stays active outdoors, cares for clients’ bodies and minds, and focuses on her own internal wellness through regular yoga and meditation.
Before Pellitteri’s pulmonary embolism hit, she had just turned 50 and had taken the day off to go skiing.
“Before all this, I was just in the mindset of, ‘I'm going to be skiing and hiking and biking until I'm 100.’ I'm healthy, health is wealth,” Pellitteri said. “But this kind of stuff can happen to anybody.”
While skiing, Pellitteri injured her leg, but wrapped it and moved a bit more slowly over the next few days. Then, she passed out in her bathroom.
Deeply in touch with her body and aware of the signs and symptoms of a cardiac event, Pellitteri suspected the cause of her collapse. After her husband called 911 and delivered CPR, the ambulance arrived, and Pellitteri shared what she knew.
“Once they got me loaded, I was awake for a little bit to tell them how I was feeling and that I'd had a recent ski accident, and then that I thought it might be a pulmonary embolism going on, and I passed out,” she said.
Pellitteri was indeed experiencing a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot that lodges between the heart and the lungs. The condition is relatively common in women in their 50s, said Dr. Brendan Clark, a pulmonary and critical care physician who serves as ICU director and ECMO medical director at St. Anthony Hospital Lakewood.
While it’s still unclear where Pellitteri’s clot formed, Dr. Clark said it’s also common for clots to start in the leg, then travel up between the heart and lungs, where they can quickly cause life-threatening complications.
“I think one important thing to emphasize is if something doesn't feel right about your body, it doesn't really matter what it is — that's why we have emergency departments. You need to get there right away, or call 911 like [Pellitteri] did,” Dr. Clark said. “And so that was actually the first step in her survival was her recognition that something is not right, and really not sitting around and wondering what that is, and delaying, seeking medical attention was really, really key in her recovery.”
Supporting Hearts and Lungs With Cutting-Edge Technology
When Pellitteri arrived at St. Anthony, her heart had already stopped and been restarted during her ambulance ride. Unbeknownst to Pellitteri at the time, St. Anthony professionals were conferring on her case before she ever arrived at the hospital.
Over the years, St. Anthony has strategically assembled a number of specialized care teams, including a pulmonary embolism response team (PERT). PERT groups together all the professionals needed to take care of a pulmonary embolism patient, assembling those providers to make quick decisions for that patient.
As the St. Anthony team figured out Pellitteri had indeed suffered a pulmonary embolism, PERT activated and delivered a drug to break up her clot. The drug was working, but Pellitteri was hit with another cardiac arrest that stopped her heart for the second time that day. After she received another round of CPR, the hospital’s cardiogenic shock team was activated to quickly discuss Pellitteri’s case and move her to the next level of care.
“Once somebody's died from something, the decisions are complex, and they need to happen quickly, and that's the value of having a team,” Dr. Clark said. “That's why we spent years building all these teams to bring people together and make decisions within minutes about lifesaving care. And that's what we did in [Pellitteri’s] case."
The cardiogenic shock team activated a third and final group of St. Anthony professionals: the ECMO team. Pellitteri’s heart, in a severely weakened state after two cardiac arrests and resuscitations, needed a break, and the hospital had just the machine to do it.
Pellitteri was connected to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, which allows a person’s lungs and heart to rest by doing their job for them. The machine pumps blood out of the body and delivers it to a “membrane lung” within the machine, which removes carbon dioxide and adds oxygen to the blood. The machine then returns blood to a patient’s veins (if the patient has lung failure) or to their arteries (if the patient, like Pellitteri, has heart failure).
While ECMO is a support mechanism and not a treatment, the machine can stabilize the body while a care team considers and implements next steps, offering crucial time for a patient who would otherwise have none.
“Once patients need to be supported by ECMO, certainly the vast majority of those patients would die if we didn't have the ability to support them with ECMO,” Dr. Clark said.
ECMO technology is not necessarily new, but St. Anthony’s machines are state-of-the-art pieces of technology that are smaller than previous devices, able to support a patient for longer than older ECMOs, and safer than ever for patients, Dr. Clark said. St. Anthony’s ECMO program — officially launched in April 2025 — has three ECMO machines, offering life-saving technology for Denver-area patients.
“It's amazing. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have that process. I'm super thankful for it. Science is helpful that way,” Pellitteri said.
Pursuing Recovery and Healing
During Pellitteri’s St. Anthony stay, she saw a hospital staff that operated like “a well-oiled machine,” from the doctors, surgeons, and nurses on her case to the teams making her meals.
“I don't recommend that anyone have to go to the hospital. But hey, if you have to go, this is the place,” Pellitteri said.
Pellitteri’s entire pulmonary embolism — her death, revival, and now, recovery — has been a clarifying experience. After a hospital stay, she’s now recovering at home and focusing on whole-body healing.
“I feel like I have always been a really happy person and excited about life, but I'm even more excited about life, in a different sense of sort of slowing down, making things more meaningful in all my interactions in day-to-day life, even the mundane things like talking to the people at the grocery store and just appreciating all the little things,” Pellitteri said.
