John's Story: Heart Attack to Heart Health
John's Story: Heart Attack to Heart Health
John’s story about his experience as a survivor of heart attack. The video reinforces the importance of making individual choices to practice behaviors that reduce the risk of heart attack.
http://millionhearts.hhs.gov/
http://recipes.millionhearts.hhs.gov/
Content
0 -> I never really went around thinking I was going to have a heart attack. It was
3.933 -> one of the farthest things from my mind. I thought it’d be nearly impossible for
9.566 -> me to have a heart attack. But I did, and it was quite a rude awakening.
15.966 ->
31.1 -> I got up that morning and had cereal for breakfast, as usual, and went down and
38.533 -> worked out on my treadmill for about 35 minutes. I was just walking through the
46.766 -> bedroom to pick up my car keys and all of a sudden I felt this tremendous pressure.
52.133 -> I got a call from him. He thinks he’s having a heart attack.
56.566 -> I didn’t know what a heart attack was before but, boy, I knew it then. It was
60.666 -> no doubt in my mind I was having a heart attack.
63.133 -> I said call 911 and do you know where the aspirin is? Well, no. Neither one of
69.1 -> us take the aspirin. I said I think it’s in my medicine cabinet.
73.133 -> So I look for the aspirin and I couldn't find it. And I did call 911 right away.
79.766 -> All the way to the hospital I thought I know he's having chest pains, he says,
85.9 -> but there’s no way he’s having a heart attack. But when we got in the emergency
91.6 -> room and I saw him, and the pain he was in in his chest, there was no question.
96.2 -> It was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever had in my life.
102.8 ->
115.833 -> My health has been excellent all my life. I’ve been very blessed. I’d never been
121.066 -> in a hospital before my heart attack and didn?t know what it looked like in there, hardly.
128 -> I was a pilot in the Air Force. Well, I played some sports before that but the
135.566 -> combination of the two sort of gave me a work ethic as far as physical exercise was concerned.
142.9 -> We walk together and we walk most every morning.
146.533 -> I’ve always been interested in staying in shape and so forth.
151.166 -> I’m the one that is responsible for meal preparation. We’ve always, I think, had
159.1 -> very healthy diets. John and I, both, have always gone and we have our
164.8 -> three-month appointments. We have a yearly check-up. We do all the things we
169.3 -> thought were proper.
170.533 -> I would say his risk factor for heart disease is really high blood pressure,
175.466 -> which he had.
176.466 -> And he’d had his cholesterol checked regularly as well as he was on
180.5 -> blood-pressure medicine, I’m on blood pressure medicine.
185.366 -> He had had a stress-test, a regular stress-test, which he passed with flying colors
190.366 -> but we know that you can have a stress-test that’s normal and later have
196.1 -> a plaque that ruptures that results in an acute event, like he did.
201.233 -> I was very aware of my family history.
205.5 -> Family history of heart disease is also a risk factor.
208.4 -> My brother had a heart attack twenty years before. He was fifty-eight. Everybody
214.2 -> on my mother’s side has died of heart attack or stroke, so apparently
219.333 -> I got my mother’s genes.
221.8 -> =
232.166 -> There are certain things that we have control over and other things that we
235.633 -> don’t have control over. We can’t give away our parents so our family history,
239.766 -> we don’t have control over that. Our sex, we don’t. Our age, we don’t.
244.633 -> But other things that we can control are blood pressure, our cholesterol level,
251.066 -> our blood-sugar level. Taking aspirin or platelet inhibitors. If you're a smoker and
257.966 -> you’ve had an event it?s absolutely important that you stop smoking and we
263.133 -> stress that very much. How much we exercise, how active we are, those are things
268.766 -> that we can control. And I think getting involved in all those things is very important.
274.933 -> In the case of Mr. Wagner, you can do all those things and still have an event.
279.833 -> Well, I think the main lesson we learned from this scenario is that, although he
283.6 -> had previously not had any symptoms at all, the day he had symptoms he was smart
289.166 -> enough to go right away to the hospital. We were able to identify that he was
294.166 -> having a heart attack and intervene immediately.
298.666 -> And he’s the kind of patient we want to see. We want to see people while they
302.166 -> have serious issues, but before they have irreversible damage.
305.8 -> I had a five-way bypass.
307.833 -> It was a very difficult procedure for him to go through.
312.266 -> So yes, he did need surgery, but by doing everything right before his recovery
317.8 -> was much easier. How you go into it does help how you come out of it.
322.266 -> I referred him to the rehab and he actually did very well.
325.666 -> I went there three times a week.
328.5 -> The nurses up at the hospital that are with him were excellent.
331.766 -> I was concerned, particularly early on, that I might never get back to where I was,
338.166 -> but that went away within a few weeks because I could see how fast I was
344.666 -> progressing. I think there's no doubt that my lifestyle and my exercising before
350.7 -> the heart attack definitely made my recovery much, much faster than it would have been.
356.233 -> As traumatic as it was and as hard as it was, he survived it and together we’ve
364.366 -> come through it and he's leading a very normal life today.
369.4 -> I think he's traveling, hiking, climbing, exercising.
374.266 -> I thought, yep, this is it. I’m back. This is going to be good.
379.866 -> Can we, as a society, improve our overall heart and health conditions?
384.633 -> Absolutely.
385.5 -> Everyone should have a conversation about their heart.
390.4 -> Bottom line is you’ve got to be proactive and you’ve got to be concerned about
396.133 -> yourself if you really want to be healthy.
399.433 -> A lot of this is within our control. If you choose to smoke, if you choose not
406.033 -> to take care of your diabetes, if you choose not to exercise and if you choose
409.766 -> to be overweight there are consequences for those actions.
414.066 -> It is never too late and it doesn’t matter what state you’re in, there is some
419.033 -> type of exercise that you can participate in.
421.333 -> All you have to do is get out there and walk. It makes you feel so much better.
427 -> Controlling those things that we have control over: blood pressure, cholesterol,
431.233 -> blood sugar.
432.233 -> We have it within our capacity.
433.833 -> Be a part of your care, and just not leave it to the physicians.
438.133 -> I’ve had a lot of friends say they were so shocked by my heart attack that
445.3 -> it’s going to change their lifestyle.
448.333 -> We’re America. We can send somebody to the moon. We certainly
453.133 -> can take care of ourselves.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DQo3uCK5_Y