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When Fred T. began helping his mother, Anita, stain the deck on July 22, neither had any idea Fred would be lying in a hospital bed, lucky to be alive, before the day was through.
"Heart-attack victim and his family receive excellent care and service at Mercy Defiance and St. V's"
As Fred's symptoms progressed from a red, sweaty face to chest and arm pain, it became clear he was having a heart attack. Panicked, Anita dialed 911 and also called a neighbor. By the time paramedics made their quick arrival, Fred was turning blue. They went to work immediately, using a defibrillator to shock his heart back into a normal rhythm.
“They lost me three times,” Fred said. “Then, it took them a while to get me stable enough for the ambulance ride.”
The ambulance took him to Mercy Hospital of Defiance, where he coded again.
“He had at least eight people working on him,” Anita said. “He flat-lined again, and they worked hard to get him back and get him ready for transport to St. V’s. My daughter’s step-daughter, Amy, who works at Mercy Defiance, came running out to me when we arrived and stayed with me. She assured me he had the best doctor he could have (Bryan Miksanek, MD) as well as a lot of great staff working on him. The employees there came and let me know they were working on him, and they kept me informed about what was going on. When the ER doctor came and talked to me, he was so nice. They let me see him before they put him on the helicopter.”
Life Flight transported Fred to Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center. When Anita arrived at St. V’s, Fred was in surgery. He received two stents to open arteries that had been 100 percent and 90 percent blocked, respectively. On July 24, after he coded again, doctors placed another stent, in an artery that had been 75 percent blocked. Fred also received a temporary pacemaker. That evening, he received a permanent pacemaker.
“Dr. Kabour (Ameer Kabour, MD, FACC, FSCAI, Cardiology) and his team were wonderful,” Anita said. “Dr. Kabour came and talked to me and didn’t sugar-coat anything. He let me know exactly what was going on, and he also talked to me about why this had happened, noting Fred’s risk factors, which included smoking three packs a day, being overweight and inactive and having high cholesterol. But he said smoking was the biggest contributing factor. Fred and I both quit smoking while he was in the hospital.”
Fred spent a week on a ventilator, during which he drifted in and out of consciousness and remembers little. He was an inpatient in the recently opened Regional Heart and Vascular Center at St. V’s, where he remained for several days after he woke up.
“From the time I woke up until I left, the care was awesome,” he said. “They were always coming to check on me, and the nurses were very nice, with many of them taking the time to explain what they were doing or what meds they were giving me and why. And, they seemed to think of everything, doing things proactively, such as giving me a PICC line so I wouldn’t have to endure multiple needle sticks for some of my IV needs.”
Anita noted that the staff also took great care of her and Fred’s sister, Sally.
“We spent the first night in a hotel but could not afford to continue doing that,” she said. “They let us stay right in his room and made sure we were comfortable, bringing us blankets and pillows and always asking if we needed anything else. I take a lot of prescription medications, which I had left at home in my hurry to get to Toledo, so they worked with my doctor to get him to call my prescriptions in to the St. V’s Pharmacy so I could get a 10-day supply.”
Fred is continuing to recover at home and is keenly aware of how fortunate he is to be alive.
“I feel pretty good considering everything my body went through,” Fred said. “It is still surreal to me to think that this happened to me.”
In a Letter to the Editor in the Defiance Crescent-News in August, Fred expressed his gratitude to those who saved his life.
“Let me start with a big thank you to the Defiance Fire Department paramedics … for not giving up on me. If not for their hard work to save my life at home after suffering a massive heart attack, I wouldn’t have made it. Next, a special thanks to all who worked on me at Mercy Hospital of Defiance emergency room, and how nice to have my niece, Amy Buehrer, a patient care technician, by my side … and to those special professionals with Life Flight. A very special thank you also to Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center ER and the Regional Heart and Vascular Center where I was given such wonderful care throughout my 10-day stay. I could not have been in better care than with Dr. Kabour, Dr. Kanaan (Tariff Kanaan, MD, Cardiology), the special nurses in the ICC (Intensive Cardiac Care Unit) and many others who provided care in recovery…I have been given a new lease on life and will try not to let any of you down.”
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