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I've been a runner really my whole life. July 16th I went on a 35 mile run as my first long
run.
I walked in the front door of my home and right away something was wrong. I was stumbling
around and finally hit the dining room table, passed out.
When they put me into the ambulance, I just remembered distinctly feeling , "This is the
last thing that I'm going to see before I die."
The day after he was admitted, one of his tests came back abnormal. Sort of corroborating
that he may have a cardiac cause for his presenting complaint.
He said that if you were my son, I would insist that we do a catheterization of your heart,
we can really draw a good closure of this and really truly see what's going on.
The goals are to cross the blockages with a guide wire, dilate with a balloon, and then
put a stint in. The stint is a spring like device that goes inside the artery and reestablishes
blood flow.
The last thing he said to me was "I want you to know you're in good hands."
He did in fact have an artery that was functionally closed, almost completely closed. And we were
able to open that up and deploy a stint inside the artery to restore the normal blood supply
to the heart and minimize any permanent damage to his heart muscle.
He cared enough to know that we could take it one more step to really make sure. And
it's because of his decision to do that that I'm here today.
I'm 100 percent confident that I would not be here otherwise.
Our goal from the time we opened the cardiovascular institute at All Saints Hospital is to make
this a destination site for comprehensive, contemporary cardiovascular care. So no matter
what the patients' problem may be, any cardiovascular problem, we are able to provide the appropriate
level of care.
I ended up running my first 50 mile run three months after my heart attack. And it was the
best day of my life.