July 3, 2015
On 2/15/15 my 29yr old brother Sean was doing his normal gym routine when he started to experience chest pain, he continued on with his workout were the chest pain got worse and started experiencing all of the normal “I’m having a heart attack symptoms” he went to the closest urgent care were the doctor there did an EKG on him and called for an ambulance who took him to the closest hospital, they ran tests and said that everything looked normal and sent him home and suggested he follow up with a cardiologist.
On 2/26/15 he went to the cardiologist who examined him and Sean expressed he had been having some symptoms for a year like blurry vision and racing heart after physical activity, the doctor wanted to do a stress test and echo and scheduled the tests for the next day.
On 2/27/15 Sean presented back to the cardiologist in the morning were he ran on the treadmill for 10mins and experienced no chest pain and felt good. The doctor said that everything looked normal on the echo as well as his stress test. Sean left the doctors office at 11am and drove to the grocery store, once he was in the grocery store he collapsed and went into a seizure/ cardiac arrest 24mins after leaving the doctors. 911 was called immediately and luckily a bystander ran over a performed CPR till the paramedics arrived on scene. Once the paramedics arrived they had to shock him multiple times to get his heart going again….once they finally got him to the hospital and got him into the cath lab they implanted 3 stents into his Coronary Artery and determined he had a SCAD.
He was put into a medical coma and placed on a ventilator so they could cool his body temperature down for 24hrs to help heal the brain in ICU for 36hrs, after 36hrs he woke up and was taken off the ventilator.
Sean spent 2 full weeks in the hospital and a week and a half in a inpatient rehabilitation center to help with his cognitive skills and balance/walking due to suffering nerve damage from being shocked so many times.
I am happy to say that Sean survived SCAD at the age of 29 years old and it at home with his family. He is still recovering, but all that matters is that he is still here with us today.
Doing research about this rare occurrence I have seen that it is even more rare to find a male who has had this occur to let alone someone who is 29 years old. I hope by sharing my brothers story I can help others learn about this and not feel like they are alone and help raise awareness.