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Chest pain begins
The day of the attack,
Woyewodzic was enjoying
landscaping in his yard. After
taking a break for lunch, he felt
intense pain in his chest.
“If you’ve had indigestion, it
was 100 times worse than that,”
he says. After grabbing a bottle
of water and taking two aspirin, he called
his wife, Carla, who called 911. That was
at 12:27 p.m.
A record-breaking
“As
a rule, I don’t have heart attacks,” Ed
Woyewodzic jokes with a big smile. “But when I do,
I call Methodist Richardson Medical Center.”
This spring, Woyewodzic had heart attack, and
only 43 minutes later a balloon was inflated in his
blocked artery, restoring blood flow to his heart and
saving his life.
heart rescue
The fire department arrives on scene
Woyewodzic was sitting on his curb when the
first responders, the Richardson Fire Department,
arrived. The firefighters began treating him
immediately.
“They were communicating with me the entire
time, which put me at ease,” Woyewodzic says.
En route to Methodist Richardson, paramedics
completed an echocardiogram, which revealed
that Woyewodzic was experiencing an ST-segment
elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) — total
blockage of an artery in the heart. The paramedics
notified the hospital’s emergency department to
prepare the cardiac catheterization lab.
8
Methodist Richardson Medical Center
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Winter 2011 – 2012