In 2007, while in the Siloam Springs Memorial Hospital emergency room with chest pains, I had a massive heart attack. The doctor had just taken a second EKG.
"Well, Mr. Byrnes," she told me, "it looks like you're trying to have a heart attack."
I noticed her hand, which was holding mine, was shaking. I could feel her fear. I looked up at her and said, "I think I'm going to pass out."
I didn't know it then, but my heart was in ventricular fibrillation, or V-fib, which is deadly and will kill you in a matter of seconds. My wife Karen said I immediately turned blue and the room filled with emergency personnel. She was ushered out and made her way to a bathroom where she prayed for me. When she walked out of the bathroom, a nurse pulled her into a small conference room where they both prayed again. She said that, as soon as they walked out of the conference room, someone came and told them, "We've got him going again!"
All I remember is that all of a sudden I was conscious. I remember having the driest mouth ever and asking for a drink. They told me I couldn't have one, but gave me a few small ice chips. They loaded me on an ambulance and we took off to Washington Regional Hospital. I went immediately into surgery, where they placed two stents in my heart. They put me in Cardiac Intensive Care.
All that night a nurse kept coming into my room and getting on to me for moving my leg where they had gone into the artery to get to my heart. The next morning I woke early and decided to get out of bed. No one was around, so I gingerly pushed back the covers and slowly slid out of bed. I felt a need to brush my teeth. I glanced at myself in the mirror and cringed to see how bad I looked. I found a toothbrush and was busy brushing my teeth when my cardiologist came into the room.
"That's what I like to see ... someone back from death and they're brushing their teeth."
He smiled and I smiled back.
"You took a pretty good lick on your heart. I'm surprised to see you up and about."
We chatted for a bit and he left.
Later that morning, my wife Karen and three of my siblings from Louisiana came to see me. This was on a Friday and the doctor said I actually might be able to go home. He said he would decide by the end of the day.
I was hoping to get out of the hospital before the weekend, especially since I had family out. I took a short walk with my brother Dennis. We walked down the hall and I looked over the banister to the floor beneath where people were going here and there. A nurse came with a wheelchair to move me to a regular room. She said she would push me but I insisted on pushing myself.
"Mr. Byrnes, I don't think any heart attack patients have ever pushed themselves to their own rooms before."
"Well, that's okay ... I don't mind being the first one,"
I told her as I worked the wheels with my hands. We made our way to my new room but were only there a few hours before the doctor came back to say he was releasing me to go home. It was late on a Friday afternoon, so we actually ate out on our way home from the hospital. Needless to say, I had a salad.
The next morning, I went out on the front porch and looked up our long driveway and wondered what life held for me now that I had had a heart attack. The doctor had informed me that my heart was damaged and that my ejection fraction was half that of a normal heart. He said that a part of my heart muscle had died and that hearts did not repair themselves. He also said I was lucky to be alive. If I had been anywhere else besides the emergency room when I went into ventricular fibrillation I would have died. This news was very sobering to me and I decided I needed to do everything I could to improve my chances of long-term survival.
As is my wont, I began to read everything I could get my hands on relating to heart disease and, most importantly, anything that promised a cure for heart disease or recovery from the damage of a heart attack.
At some point in time, I came across the work of Dr. Dean Ornish, a cardiologist who had done experiments with diet to help heart patients' halt and, in many cases, reverse heart disease. I began to eat a very strict vegetarian diet with no meat, dairy, eggs, or added oil or sweeteners of any kind. I also began to walk and ride my bike every day. I lost about 30 pounds and began to feel really great.
A few months later, on one of my follow up visits to the cardiologist, he said he wanted to show me something. He took me to another room and inserted a DVD into a computer. It was a video of my stent placement, so I got to see him placing the stent into an artery of my heart. He pointed to the top portion of my heart and said,
"Do you see how that part of your heart is stiff and doesn't move? That's because the muscle right there is dead. Now here is another video from a followup heart cath that we did a few weeks ago. As you can see the top portion of your heart is moving like it should." The doctor paused to look me in the eye. "Mr. Byrnes, I don't know what you are doing, but keep it up. We simply don't see this kind of improvement in heart function. Your ejection fraction is now in the normal range."
Well, I went home with a light heart, but sad to say, I did not continue to walk in a healthful lifestyle. Over time, I gradually ate less and less healthy and all too soon I was back to my old ways. Eventually, I would succumb to another major heart attack -- one that would require five bypasses, but let's save that story for another day.
Sam Byrnes is a Gentry-area resident and weekly contributor to the Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 04/13/2016