I’m a cardiologist and I had a heart attack
I’m a cardiologist and I had a heart attack
Dr. William Wilson shares his personal account of his emergency cardiac event.
Content
1.54 -> When I had my heart attack I was 63 and before that happened
7.9 -> my health was awesome as far as I was concerned.
12.5 -> First of all, I'm a doctor. I'm a cardiologist and a cardiologist don't do a lot of sitting at work.
19.5 -> We are on our feet all the time I'm fortunate in
that I have a very active job and then
25.76 -> on top of that I exercise all the time
I have four years.
30.72 -> So that was where I was on January 22nd of 2018
37.08 -> I was feeling great in fact I was on vacation.
41.18 -> I was going to read and run some errands
but my wife was going to exercise about
48.44 -> nine o'clock in the morning and she says
hey you wanna go with me I said sure
53.96 -> and she was with her personal trainer doing
her thing and I really was just kind of messing around.
59.44 -> I really wasn't doing my
usual workout. I was on the Stairmaster
66.82 -> But I wasn't kicking it by any means I
was - in fact I had just kind of started.
73.14 -> The symptoms came on initially in a mild
way it didn't just hit me boom in one second.
81.06 -> But I started it was chest
discomfort and it wasn't a sharp discomfort.
86.46 -> It wasn't like a knife or anything like that.
89.4 -> it was just a kind of an uncomfortable
oppressive pressing discomfort and of
96.99 -> course you would think that I would know
what this is and of course I did,
101.42 -> but not for about 30 or 60 seconds.
105.22 -> For the amount of exercise I was doing
I was dripping wet
108.74 -> and you know to the point where your shirts you know where people can see how much you're sweating.
115.36 -> I was in denial. I was trying to talk myself
118.53 -> out of this and say this isn't happening.
This can't be happening to me.
123.36 -> I mean, I'm a cardiologist. This doesn't happen to cardiologists.
128 -> I mean if you have a pain somewhere like you jam your finger or you break your ankle or you hit your head,
134.64 -> I mean that hurts that's a pain but you don't have this overwhelming sense of doom.
141.72 -> It's very common when somebody's having a heart attack,
144.52 -> they have to go to the bathroom
really bad.
147 -> It's part of the whole nervous system thing with a heart attack that's activated.
152.32 -> And so sure enough I had to go to the bathroom at the gym
156.44 -> and I just was... I prayed.
162.14 -> And so then I went up to my wife and she said she went through all the things in my life that
170.42 -> I've had wrong with me. She goes your shoulder? I said no, it's not my shoulder.
173.1 -> I'm having a heart attack.
175.54 -> And she said... I mean it was awesome.
181.94 -> She just she took care of business she says let's go.
186.68 -> Of course I'm used to call the emergency
room telling them that I've got a
190.32 -> patient with a heart attack or I've got
this you know but I've never called the
194.25 -> emergency room and said I'm having a
heart attack
196.88 -> and by the time I got to
198.54 -> the emergency room pulled it up I mean
it you know they were already I mean you
204.96 -> know it was people were kind of in a
little bit of as much amazement as I was
210.27 -> because I'm not probably the person that
they expected to have a heart attack.
214.59 -> The key is for treating a heart attack
is getting to the hospital as quickly as you can
221.48 -> and then once you're there then the cardiology team and the hospital team will take it from there
227.82 -> and they really move.
230.3 -> I do caths every day on people now who have the exact same thing I had.
235.48 -> Every breath I realized that I am very fortunate.
238.76 -> It could have been -
it could have gone a totally different way,
242.9 -> and I'm lucky to be alive.
245.3 -> I believe in God and I believe that my partners at
250.8 -> the Heart Institute not only the doctors
but the cath lab staff and the nursing staff
257.6 -> in the emergency room everything
went just like clockwork and all the
261.84 -> nurses that took care of me afterwards
up on the Heart Institute floor...
265.7 -> I just have a tremendous amount of gratitude to
all them because they
271.38 -> everybody was just awesome.
273.26 -> I couldn't have had better care.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Tf-aclI0Y