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CARDIAC CARE
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“Is
that the best you can do?” Bill
Duggan called to his 16-year-old grandson
as he tried out his new skateboard.
It was a good-natured jab, and his
grandson fired right back: “Can you do
any better?”
“I sure can,” Bill said.
The next thing he knew, he was lying
flat on his back in the driveway.
“I knew I’d hurt my shoulder
considerably because I had never felt
anything like that before,” he recalls.
The next morning he headed to
Methodist Richardson Medical Center,
a place he’d come to for years — 28 as
a paramedic with the Richardson Fire
Department, 13 of those as emergency
medical services chief.
Diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff, Bill
required surgery. But first he needed a
complete physical.
“I failed my stress test miserably,” Bill says.
“I had thought I was in pretty good shape for a
70-year-old guy, but they found a blockage in
my heart.”
New and improved cardiac services
Only a few days later, Bill had a cardiac
catheterization procedure with Nhan
Nguyen, MD, interventional cardiologist
on the Methodist Richardson medical staff.
With cardiac catheterization, a thin catheter
is threaded to a blockage in the heart. A
small balloon on the catheter’s tip is inflated,
widening the artery and restoring blood flow.
“Bill is a perfect example of why the new
Methodist Richardson has two dedicated
cardiac catheterization labs,” Dr. Nguyen says.
“This procedure saves lives in an emergency or
preventively, as in Bill’s case. He had a 90 percent
blockage in one of his coronary arteries, but we got
to it before it cut off his blood supply completely
and led to a heart attack.”
Dr. Nguyen kept Bill overnight for
observation, and the retiree went home the
next morning.
“I guess falling on that shoulder, in a way,
may have saved my life,” Bill says. “Things work in
crazy ways. If I hadn’t have wrecked my shoulder,
I wouldn’t have taken that physical and found
the blockage.”
Stoked about Methodist Richardson
Sixteen years after retiring, Bill says
Methodist Richardson is still there for him
and his community.
“I was shocked that I had cardiac problems
and didn’t know what to expect, but I put my
faith in Methodist Richardson and it worked,”
he says. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate
this hospital. They were wonderful, and I was
completely satisfied from start to finish.”
A skateboarding accident sent
Bill Duggan, shown here with
his grandson, Ryan Hughes,
to Methodist Richardson. It’s
a good thing, too. That’s how
he discovered his heart needed
some help.
Bill Duggan’s skateboarding
accident led to finding and
fixing his heart blockage
Methodist Richardson Medical Center
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Fall 2014
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