Recovery from Heart Attack Thanks to Full Spectrum of Heart Care

Hector Matias, 59, of Pocono Summit, has cleaned up his act since suffering a heart attack last fall. He no longer smokes and eats a healthier diet – low in sodium and carbs. He believes had it not been for the excellent care he received at St. Luke’s University Health Network he wouldn’t have gotten the second chance to turn his life around.

“I was forewarned that it was going to be a slow process,” says Matias, who recently began cardiac rehab at St. Luke’s newly expanded Monroe campus. He’s willing to be patient because, he says, “they took such good care of me during my St. Luke’s hospital stays that I am here to tell about it.”

See video: https://vimeo.com/1082625579/1dae03f82e?share=copy

Back in late October, Matias, who owns a cleaning business, had driven his customer to the paint store for supplies. Suddenly, he did not feel well. He was seeing bright lights and had a terrible headache. His customer went to get him some orange juice thinking his blood sugar was low. Matias waited in the car but started feeling queasy and had the urge to go to the bathroom. He walked into a nearby sub shop. As he was leaving the shop, he collapsed but did not lose consciousness.

His customer wanted to take him to the hospital, but he wanted to go home first to take care of his dog. At home, when he started sweating profusely, she called an ambulance. Matias was taken to the ER at St. Luke’s Monroe. The EMS technician held his hand on the ride and told him he wasn’t alone. “That was very comforting,” Matias recalls. 

At the hospital, the staff, having been alerted that a heart attack patient was coming in, moved quickly rushing Matias to the cardiac catheterization lab. Scans at the lab revealed he had multiple clogged arteries. He was quite sick and required a temporary pacemaker, says his cardiologist, Joseph McGarvey, MD.

Dr. McGarvey noted that the St. Luke’s heart team excels across the full range of cardiac care: from the EMS notification of a heart attack prior to arrival, rapid evaluation once in the ED, rapid transfer to the cardiac catheterization lab for stenting, to open-heart surgery if necessary, and to follow-up rehab care.

“This is why patients such as Hector achieve such remarkable recoveries at our Network,” McGarvey says.

McGarvey placed a stent in the artery that was identified as causing the heart attack; Matias stabilized.  At his follow-up care, Matias learned he would need a triple bypass as well. It was scheduled for December at St. Luke’s Bethlehem and was performed by William E. Gioia, DO.

Matias sings the praises of everyone who cared for him during both stays at St. Luke’s, from the housekeepers to the medical staff. “This was a really scary time for me,” Matias says. “It helped that they really made me feel like a person, not a number,” he says. Everyone treated him with the utmost respect and kindnesses, he says, even when helping him with simple daily tasks that he couldn’t do by himself at first.

Matias also greatly appreciated that the staff kindly kept his family members abreast of his progress throughout his stays. His daughter and fiancé live three hours away. They were reaching out at all hours to those caring for him “in hopes of being updated, which in turn made things more bearable for them,” Matias says.