After heart attack, rabbi says: Thank you, God. Thank you, Fort Worth.
I dropped my wife, Ann, off at the entrance to Costco so she could check on contact lenses while I went to fill the car with gasoline and then to park. As I entered the store and approached the Optometry area, I began to get another of those little attacks that had been plaguing me for some weeks.
I would feel tightness across my upper chest, not pain exactly, though lately an ache was making them worse. Many times I glanced at my watch and thus came to realize that in 30 to 60 seconds the spell would pass and I would feel fine.
I reached into my pocket for a couple of Tums and began chewing them. But they did not help, of course, because the cause of my discomfort was not acid reflux.
I was having a heart attack.
A few more seconds went by and I began to feel faint, and knelt down, thinking to put my head down and perhaps not faint.
That is the last thing I recall before I woke up surrounded by paramedics trying to calm me down and reassure me they were there to help. From the floor looking up I saw a jumble of faces, legs and arms. Was I dreaming? They were trying to stop me from flailing around. I think I was trying to get up, and they wanted me to lie still. Was this a dream, I wondered?
It was no dream. And that is where a scary story turns into a story of luck, perhaps, and blessing, for sure.
“Tums?!” you might properly have wondered as you read the above.
I am not quite as foolish as that sounds. As the brief feelings of tightness in my upper chest began to occur more often some six weeks before, my first thought was of heart trouble.
I called the cardiologist I had gone to not too long before so that a specialist would be monitoring my cholesterol levels and drug treatment, a daily statin drug and a daily baby-aspirin. My cholesterol was reasonably under control, and the doctor complemented me on my level of exercise.
But this time I was worried. Shouldn’t I have a stress test, especially since Ann and I were about to go to the Rockies to escape the August Texas heat? The nurse who took the call promised to check with the doctor and get right back to me.
“Yes, let’s do a stress test to check out your heart” was the answer.
As I walked the treadmill, wires running from my body to an EKG machine, I sweated, but I knew I was doing well. After 12 minutes the tech promised I would hear back from the doctor soon. The cardiologist’s nurse called later with the doctor’s judgment; “Go and enjoy the mountains! Your heart is in good shape.”
But then what about the symptoms? A good friend had told me earlier that when she had felt tightness in the chest, antacid tablets had helped. “Yes,” said the nurse, “It could be acid reflux.”
I took a 14-day run of an over-the-counter antacid, including for our week in Park City, Utah, where the scenery was spectacular.
Perhaps my spells were diminishing, I thought. Certainly they were not debilitating. And my heart, I knew, thanks to years of statins and modest exercise, was in good shape!
Was I ever lucky!
That brings us back to the floor of Costco.
Was I ever lucky! Ann saw me kneeling and thought I was looking at a potential purchase. But when she stepped over to me, I collapsed. She knew about my little spells.
“Call 911!” she hollered to the clerks. “Does anyone here know CPR? Is there a doctor here?!” she said to passers-by. I was out cold, but in the telling I hear she was a balance of panic and calm resolve.
A stranger passing by said he did know CPR, and administered it while Costco staff called not only 911, but store managers. The store’s defibrillator appeared — and a staff member trained to use it. My heart had stopped, and I was not breathing. A woman suggested to Ann that they say a prayer together, and they did.
One electric shock, and I was revived. By then other Costco personnel had cleared the area for the helpers and the soon-to-arrive MedStar paramedics. The “Good Samaritan” went on his way when they came, not even waiting for a thank-you. The store manager thinks he told someone he was an off-duty paramedic, but no one got his name (if you read this, please let us thank you!).
The longer it takes for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and electric shock to be administered, the less likely they are to work, and, because of the pause in blood flow to the brain, the more likely there will be brain damage even if it does.
Blood flows smoothly again
Had my cardiac arrest occurred half way down a mountain in Utah, I would be dead. My doctor and the cath lab team, arriving from their homes almost as quickly as the ambulance.
“This is how the system is supposed to work!” they said in wonderment. Had we been at home waiting for the ambulance — which took only minutes! — I could have been far worse off than I was at Costco, where the whole community, it seemed, could swing into action immediately.
Nurses and technicians at Texas Health’s downtown Harris Hospital Emergency Room were gentle and encouraging. The technology was amazing. Four of five cardiac arteries turned out to have been clean in the first place, and the fifth now has a stent in it so blood may flow smoothly.
Two hours after the attack I was in the cath lab, and not so much later, in recovery, feeling good. In two days, I was back home, and in three, I was teaching my scheduled class at Brite Divinity School at TCU. My chest is very sore from the CPR, but I am alive!
Forgive a writer of theology a further speculation.
Everyone keeps saying God was obviously watching over me. I cannot be so ungrateful as to dispute that. But not only strangers whose job it was, but strangers whose job it was not, who just cared — in the religious world we say strangers who loved — were God’s instruments.
Thank you, God. Thank you, Fort Worth.
Ralph Mecklenburger is rabbi emeritus at Beth-El Congregation in Fort Worth and author of Our Religious Brains.
This story was originally published September 17, 2016 at 6:13 PM with the headline "After heart attack, rabbi says: Thank you, God. Thank you, Fort Worth.."