Wayland resident publishes book on family’s journey

In June 2019, John Bain and his wife received a phone call he said no parent ever wants to get.

His daughter, Christie Firth, had suddenly collapsed at work in Texas.

Her heart had stopped beating.

Christie’s co-workers called emergency responders, and a police officer kept her alive until she could be taken to the hospital.

Bain and his wife made the 12-hour drive to Texas to be by Christie’s side.

She was taken to Christus St. Michael Hospital in Texarkana, Texas, where doctors determined she had gone into cardiac arrest at work.

The incident was a shock to the family.

“She was 29 years old at the time this happened, and never had any issues before,” Bain said. “She had just give birth to our grandson two and a half months prior to this event.”

Christie had to be placed in a medically induced coma to prevent her brain from swelling.

Doctors discovered she was born with a birth defect unknown to the family until that point. Her pulmonary artery was on the wrong side of her heart.

She was flown by air ambulance to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio after her doctors determined she would be able to get the best care for her condition there.

Two weeks after she collapsed, surgery in Cleveland repaired the defect in Christie’s heart and save her life.

Bain credits angels for helping Christie through her illness. In addition to the angels, he and his wife were with their daughter during the ordeal before COVID-19 kept family from hospital patients.

“Christie had us with her all the time, the whole time, through the whole hospital experience … if this would have happened in 2020, she would have had to go through this all by herself,” Bain said.

Christie lives with her husband, Brian, and children Natalie, 9, and Westin, 2, in Simms, Texas — hundreds of miles from the Bain’s residence in Wayland.

“If she would have had the cardiac arrest incident at her home, she lives out in the country, and she would have only been there with her infant son, there would have been no one to call for help for her, and no one to help her,” he said.

After going through the experience, some of Bain’s friends suggested he write a book about what his family went through.

“Many times, I had many different people in different occasions say to me, ‘You should write a book,’” he said. “And I heard it enough times that I thought: ‘You know what, maybe I should write a book.’”

In January 2020, Bain, recently retired from radio broadcasting, sat down to get his family’s story on paper.

By August, he had written 10,000 words.

An email connected Bain with Christian Faith Publishing, which he worked with to get his work edited and published.

“Christie’s Journey: The Beat Goes On,” was released in February and is available in online bookstores and at the Washington and Kalona libraries.

Bain will be signing copies of his book on July 31 at the Kalona library.

The book has received positive reaction online and from Bain’s family and friends.

He said that writing the book was a calling for him.

“Lots of people have said that they knew we were going through stuff, but they didn’t know the detail that we were going through until they read it in the book,” he said.