A Young Heart Attack Survivor’s Story

I’m a 37 year old husband and father of four. I am a wakeboarder. I am a show skier. I am a mountain biker. I am a snowboarder. I am a software developer. That’s how I’ve always identified. Each of those things takes on more or less weight, depending on the crowd I’m with at the time, but they have stayed pretty consistent for my entire adult life.

That is, until the evening of August 17, 2016.

It was an ordinary summer day for me, other than a work meeting that ran quite long and pushed my usual lunchtime back several hours. When I came up to eat lunch around 2pm, I noticed an odd feeling in my chest. I described it to my wife as kind of a tension, like that feeling you get when your heart starts working during a cardio exercise. It was mild and I decided to wait and see what came of it. I went back to work and eventually I stopped noticing it. After work, I had plans to take my oldest daughter out for a date night, but I still wanted to get in what would have been my lunch workout. So, I hopped on the elliptical for a 30 minute interval training session before hitting the shower.

On the drive to dinner in the next town over, I started to notice the feeling in my chest again. Like before, it was still mild, but I found it odd that the feeling came back. During dinner with my daughter, the feeling started to slowly increase in intensity. Since my daughter was super excited for our date night (one-on-one time doesn’t happen a lot with three siblings), I didn’t want to ruin the evening.

I didn’t want to ruin the evening.

Throughout dinner, we enjoyed good conversation, but I was starting to worry about the feeling in my chest. It continued to increase in intensity and I was starting to think it was a good idea to go get myself checked out. When we finished dinner, my daughter was all set to go mini-golfing, so I had to tell her that I really wasn’t feeling well and I needed to go see a doctor. I hadn’t given her any indication that I wasn’t feeling well, in the hopes of not ruining our date night, so she was pretty devastated. We hopped in the car and I called my wife to tell her that the feeling was back in force and that I was going to get checked out. I drove us the few miles to the nearest emergency room and we walked in together.

I don’t know if it was my physical appearance, the fact that I was starting to get shaky and had to lean on the counter, the words “chest pain”, or all of the above, but once I told the nurse that I was having chest pain, she wasted no time sending me back to a room and getting me hooked up for an EKG. From that point on, things started to turn into a blur. My wife and the remainder of my kids showed up just as the nurse gave me Nitro to relax the arteries to my heart and brain, hoping to help reduce the pain in my chest. The Nitro didn’t help all that much and they eventually gave me a second dose. After a second EKG, the doctor came in and said they think this is the “real deal”.

The doctor came in and said they think this is the “real deal”.

She told me they don’t have the facilities to handle an active heart attack and I was going to be transferred by ambulance to Abbot Northwestern in Minneapolis (about a 45 minute ride). My wife and I were both shocked. My kids started to cry. I am 37 years old. This can’t be happening.

The doctors and nurses started prepping me for departure and took a chest X-ray, while I feebly tried to console my wife and kids. Then it was off to an ambulance, out the door, and on the road with the lights and sirens blaring.

I am 37 years old. This can’t be happening.

On the ride over, I could see out the back window of the ambulance. Cars were pulling over, reflecting the red and blue lights, and we were flying by them all. The machine monitoring my heart continued to beep. The blood pressure cuff filled and emptied every few minutes. Could this be it? Is this how I go? Are my kids going to lose their father today? Is my wife going to become a widow today? Are all my affairs in order? All these questions were racing through my mind. I was scared. Not so much scared for me, but scared for my family. I wasn’t ready to leave my family.

I wasn’t ready to leave my family.

The EMT riding next to me warned me that things would move quickly once we arrived at Abbot Northwestern. He wasn’t kidding. We got there and it was straight to an express elevator, then to the operating room. As I was rolled in to the room, I noticed that there were a dozen or so people standing there looking at me, all dressed and ready for surgery. Once I was transferred to the hospital’s gurney, those dozen or so people converged. I was immediately surrounded by a well choreographed flurry of activity as every person in that room engaged their assigned task.

The next few hours get fuzzy for me. I was given something to “make me feel more comfortable”, which made me either forget most of what happened or go lights out for a while. I do remember someone saying they were going in through the main artery in my leg and I remember feeling weird little movements in my abdomen. When it was all over, they rolled me up to my room, where my wife met me. That’s when I learned that I had earned a new identifier: heart attack survivor.

I had earned a new identifier: heart attack survivor.

I had a heart attack. Me. 37 year old me.

The doctor proceeded to talk about the procedure that saved my life. I had an 80% blockage in my lower anterior descending (LAD) artery, and a blood clot had let loose to completely block one of the smaller arteries. He told us they performed an angiogram, suctioned out the smaller blockage, and put a stent in place of the main blockage. He said 50 years ago I would not have survived. I also learned later that blockages in the LAD are referred to as “widow makers” because they usually give no warning. The victim usually just drops and that’s it.

On the left, the 80% blockage at the upper arrow and the 100% blockage at the lower arrow. On the right, the blockages after surgery.

For the next two days or so, I learned what my future would look like in the near and long term. The near term would include limited physical activity, lifting restrictions, a handful of medications, and cardiac rehab therapy. The long term should see me back in full form, taking fewer medications.

Around 40 hours after entering the ER with chest pain, I was allowed to return home to my family and friends.

Why did this happen to me?

Why did this happen to me? I still don’t know. My doctors are baffled. I’m young (by heart health standards, anyway), exercise every day, eat well most of the time, maintain a healthy weight, have low blood pressure and low cholesterol, and don’t smoke. Basically, I have none of the controllable risk factors. I do have some family history of heart problems, but not immediate family (parents or siblings) and all 20+ years older than me at the time of their events.

I have my first follow up with my cardiologist at the end of the month and I plan to talk more about the “why” of it all with him. Hopefully he can provide some more insight at that time. For now, I’m just focusing on my recovery and enjoying the life that I still have, thanks to the fantastic medical team at Abbot Northwestern.

It’s been a little over two weeks, at the time of this writing, since I had a heart attack. The whole thing is still surreal. I walked out of the hospital with a sore hand (it didn’t like the IV) and a sore incision point in my groin. That was it. Within a few days, those both started to fade and now I feel great. In fact, I feel like I could get back on my wakeboard. Of course, I won’t because I’m not an idiot. But the point is, I don’t feel like I had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago.

I don’t feel like I had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago

I feel very lucky that things went as smoothly as they did. I likely had had the blockage for at least a little while before it made its presence known. I could have had a heart attack earlier in the summer when we were on a two week family road trip through the Black Hills and Yellowstone, where we had no cell phone coverage and medical aid was hundreds of miles away. I could have had a heart attack early in the summer when I was mountain biking with my son. I could have had a heart attack days earlier when I was out on the lake wakeboarding with my family. Thankfully, when I actually had the heart attack, I was very close to a good medical facility.

I took this picture wakeboarding with my GoPro three days before having a heart attack.

Looking back, the thing that is the most amazing to me, and incredibly humbling, is the outpouring of love and support from our family and friends. Our friends who dropped everything and rushed to our aid, picking up and taking care of our kids, and driving my wife from the ER to Abbot Northwestern. Our family who raced from WI to be by my side and take over caring for our kids for a few days. Our friends who have brought us food and mowed our lawn and offered to help with anything else we need help with. Our friends and family who comforted my wife with late night texts. One thing a crisis like this can do is show you who has your back no matter what. I cannot properly express in words how grateful I am for the family and friends in our life.

A crisis can show you who has your back no matter what.

I learned a few things from all of this. I learned that I should be able to live a full life. However, if I live to 80 years old, statistically speaking, I will likely have 5–6 more events like this. I also learned that there are a number of risk factors for coronary artery disease that can be controlled, such as:

• Cholesterol
• Blood pressure
• Weight
• Smoking
• Excessive alcohol consumption

And there are some risk factors that can’t be controlled:

• Age
• Genetics

If there’s only one thing that my situation does, I hope it’s to bring awareness to heart health. I know many people who have had some sort of heart related event, so I am far from unique. However, my age and overall physical condition usually makes it very surprising to those that hear about me. While being young and healthy makes it surprising to have a heart attack, it also is a big reason why I was able to survive one without any damage to my heart. That, and the fact that I didn’t ignore the warning signs. Many men will ignore warning signs, lay down, and never wake up.

Many men will ignore warning signs, lay down, and never wake up.

I am happy with the people in my life and I don’t want to lose any of them. Look at yourself objectively and do what you can to control your risk factors for heart disease. If you feel something odd in your chest, please don’t ignore it. If that happens, I hope that my story comes to mind. Let the medical professionals determine if it’s nothing to worry about. It’s what they are there for and they are very good at what they do.

Having a heart attack doesn’t have to be the end of your story. Just the beginning of a new chapter. I’m looking forward to writing mine.

Edit: I’m still going strong! Here’s my follow-up 1 year later.