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Chat Room discussion leads to matters of the heart
On the night of September 21, 2007, Ken Guchereau sat in the passenger seat of his
wife’s car thinking, “I’m right here in the shadows of Hoag Hospital and I’m not going to make it.”
A late summer storm was causing rain and thunder to pound the coast. Traffic was heavy, and Christina Bahr, Ken’s wife, was doing everything she could to stay calm while navigating her way through the torrential downpour. Cars were stacking up on Newport Boulevard, the roads were flooded and policemen were arriving on the scene of an accident. She managed to turn right onto Hospital Road, inching her way past medical buildings, and all the while reminding herself of how adamant Ken had been about getting to Hoag Hospital.
That night, Ken and Christina drove from their home in the city of Orange, bypassing two local area hospitals. At various times throughout their 13-mile drive they questioned their decision. Christina worried that she should have called 911. Ken wasn’t completely sure that driving to the hospital was the smartest thing to do. During the drive, Ken emembered that his younger brother and mother died of heart attacks and worried that this was probably not a good situation.
“But I didn’t want to be taken to a hospital and given some pills and told to go home and relax,” Ken confided. “My friend did that, and three days later he had to have bypass surgery. I had a confidence that if I got to Hoag I would be okay.”
Within minutes of arriving at Hoag’s Emergency Department, Ken was admitted to the hospital and stabilized. Two hours later, he suffered a second heart attack.
Today, Ken and Christina happily tell their story hoping that others will benefit from what they believe was “truly meant to be.” According to the couple, it was through an event hosted by Hoag Hospital Foundation that Ken was able to identify symptoms he had been experiencing earlier in the week as heart-attack rather than stress.
“I’m a typical guy that writes things off to stress,” Ken said. “I had had indigestion for a few days, sometimes my arms would ache, and sometimes I would feel slight pressure on my chest. But every time I would lie down on the couch and relax, it would go away,” he explained. “It definitely flared up during stressful situations at work, but again, I would relax and it would go away.”
On the Wednesday prior to September 21, Ken and Christina attended a Foundation reception where Christina was being honored with the Vin Jorgensen Award for her work as Chairperson of the Foundation’s Planned Giving Committee. Before the award ceremony, the Foundation was hosting “chat rooms” for all those attending the reception. Hoag physicians addressed such topics as cancer, women’s services, cardiovascular health and neurosciences.
This specific chat room featured Hoag physicians, Dr. Richard Haskell, medical director of cardiology, and Dr. Aidan Raney, medical director of cardiac surgery, who happened to be discussing angioplasty. It was a couple of nights later, when Ken’s arm pain and indigestion did not seem to go away with relaxation, that things started clicking in his head.
“It was really interesting because I remembered during the Q&A period of the chat room discussion questions about ‘typical’ symptoms of a heart attack,” Ken said.
“I only knew the TV version – massive pain, can’t breathe, falling over. But then I remembered the doctor saying that there are no standard symptoms for heart attacks. That you can have shoulder pain, back pain, arm pain… and that’s when I realized …
I was experiencing symptoms of a heart attack.”
Dr. Dipti Itchhaporia, medical director of disease management at Hoag Heart and Vascular Institute, performed angioplasty on Ken the morning of September 22 and placed two stents in his right coronary artery. Because of the quick decision by Dr. Itchhaporia to perform the angioplasty, Ken is making a full recovery with no damage to his heart. Ken believes the information and call to action that he received while at the chat room saved his life.
From Christina’s point of view it was nothing short of a miracle.
“Ken and I were raised with the philosophy of giving back. Besides my involvement with Hoag Hospital Foundation, Ken is on an advisory board at Cal State Fullerton’s School of Business. We do things that we feel passionate about,” said Christina. “You don’t ever think about what you get back [from volunteering]. But I got everything back from Hoag when this happened.”
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