Family celebrates special Father's Day

By Alex Cameron, NEWS 9

This Father's Day, Ron Kimbrough will be celebrating more than his fatherhood, he'll be celebrating his second-chance on life.

Kimbrough had been feeling some pressure in his chest, but wasn't planning on going to the doctor. His wife set up an appointment for him on February 28 and forced Kimbrough to go.

"[I figured I'll] leave my jacket there at work, I'll be back in two hours," Kimbrough said. "I'm just old. He'll tell me I'm tired, slow down."

Instead, Dr. Wade McCoy told Kimbrough he needed more tests.

"I decided we needed to do something very aggressive," McCoy said.

While McCoy was getting him to a local cardiologist, Kimbrough's daughter was trying to make sense of a feeling she'd had that morning.

"I woke up with the urgency to pray for my dad, and I didn't know really specifically why," Kimbrough's daughter, Crystal Ricketson, said.

But she learned soon enough. Ron had been sent to a local hospital for tests and was in a room recovering, with his wife at his side.

"I was just talking to him, and all of a sudden he starts making this snoring kind of noise and I thought he was just playing," Joyce Kimbrough said.

But Kimbrough wasn't playing, his heart had stopped beating.

"And that's called asystole, which is basically death; so Ron basically died," McCoy said.

"I can't remember when I went down," Kimbrough said. "I'm on a cobblestone road, and I can see the most beautiful flowers, I mean it'd make HDTV look like black and white. I just remember standing there, taking all that in, and boom, all of the sudden I'm back in the hospital bed. All I see is people around me and they're all beating different places on me and hollering, ‘Stay with us, stay with us'."

Jamie, Kimbrough's son, felt his father survived not only because of the skilled doctors, but pure luck.

"The way stuff went down, if he hadn't been all the right places at the right time, that morning...my mother could have easily been planning a funeral," Jamie Kimbrough, said.

Instead, the family is planning a special Father's Day this year.

"This one will be really special, and I just give God the glory that he gave him a second chance," Ricketson said.

Ron Kimbrough got a pacemaker and is doing very well. Dr. McCoy said that really he is a miracle -- medical and beyond.

As a part of men's health month, INTEGRIS Men's Health University is offering free health screenings.

A medical team will check blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol levels. The next event is Saturday, June 21 from 9 a.m. until noon at INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center.