Jennifer Fox
Each year, about 1.1 million people in the U.S. have heart attacks, and almost half of them die, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Association. In the spring of 2008, high school teacher Patrick Fox, 48, had a heart attack that stopped his heart and left him dead six times. Each time he was resuscitated he regained consciousness, not realizing the severity of what had just happened. The sixth time he died, he says he saw a blinding light and felt a sense of calm, but then he was revived again. This time he stayed alive.
The reason, he believes now, with a year of reflection and dealing with post-traumatic stress behind him, was so that he could write about his experiences for other heart attack survivors and their loved ones. On the anniversary of his heart attack, he completed his book, which he self-published: "The Widow-Maker Heart Attack at Age 48."
AOL Health had the opportunity to speak to Fox about his heart attack, called a "widow-maker" because of its severity. As Fox explains, "From the minute a widow-maker hits to when you have to be in the hospital to survive, you only have a window of five minutes. They got me to the hospital in three minutes and 20 seconds. You don't have much warning -- because it's such a massive heart attack. It's the heart attack Tim Russert had. He had a similar blockage of his left artery."
AOL Health: Your story seems astonishing -- dying six times of a heart attack. Was there anything about your health up to that point that would have indicated this risk?
Patrick Fox: None. There are six risk factors associated with a heart attack. [According to the American Heart Association, these include smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, diabetes, being overweight or obese and physical inactivity.] And I didn't have any of them. So when I asked, the doctors told me, "There is a seventh factor. You are a very prime candidate for that category: 'Stuff happens to good people.'" The only thing that I had was high cholesterol, but I'd been taking medicine for cholesterol for 27 years, so that wasn't really a factor. I've also taken an aspirin a morning for the last 10 years. I'm 5'11" and 190 pounds. I'm not fat; I'm not a diabetic. I don't smoke. It's not in my family genetics.
AOL Health: Can you describe how you felt leading up to this massive heart attack?
Fox: It happened on March 31, 2008. On March 29, my wife and I unloaded 150 bales of hay for our horses, each one weighing 50 pounds, and on March 30, I chainsawed trees down all day for [firewood]. I felt great both days. So on March 31, I had no idea what was happening. There was no tightness of the chest muscles. The pain was all on the tips of my shoulder blades. I thought it was all from lifting hay. It's very difficult and strenuous. Plus, I literally chainsawed trees all day the next day. So I thought it was all muscle-related. So when it happened, I was at school; the assistant principal, the school nurse and I thought it was related to a pinched nerve.
AOL Health: What did you do to try to alleviate the pain?
Fox: Not good measures. Calisthenics. I did jumping jacks, push-ups, shoulder stretches, pitching wind-ups and arm rolls. I even did some sit-ups. I did everything an athlete would do. I thought it would alleviate the muscle tightness. Looking back, it was not the brightest thing I've done in my life. The people in the ICU got a real laugh out of it. They just shook their heads and laughed. I explained to them about the chainsawing and the throwing of the hay, and they said they would have done the same thing.
AOL Health: Could the exercises have exacerbated the pain, or did they just not help?
Fox: No. The doctors told me I had a 100 percent blockage in the left artery -- which is what makes it a widow-maker heart attack. Not 90 percent, 100 percent. So whatever broke the plaque loose and caused the heart attack could have happened Sunday when I chainsawed the trees.
AOL Health: What ultimately led you to call an ambulance?
Fox: When you break a bone there is a sharp pain, but nearly immediately it dulls and even numbs. This pain felt like someone was putting wood screws into my shoulder blades and tightening them with a socket wrench.
AOL Health: When the ambulance arrived did you realize this was a bigger threat than the back pain you first thought it was?
Fox: No, because the pain never moved from my shoulder blades. It's really critical to know that heart attacks aren't created equally. They can present themselves in different ways. I never had pain shooting up my left arm; I never had chest pains; I never had sweats; I never threw up leading up to the heart attack. But within 10 seconds of giving my cell phone to the EMT to call my wife to tell her, I flatlined.
AOL Health: Is that the first time you died, or as you say they call it in the medical world "coded"?
Fox: Yes. Just as the gurney was about to hit the ground [from the ambulance] to enter the hospital, I awoke from being shocked back to life.
Click through the photo slide show below to learn more about Fox's deaths and recoveries. Note: You'll need to disable your pop-up blocker.
Widow-Maker Heart Attack Survivor
AOL Health: Did you realize you were dying?
Fox: Someone had to tell me [I died]. They told me I had to stay focused. I was like, "I'm really trying to stay focused, but I really don't get it." I didn't think it was anything major. I didn't have a real grasp of it. Then I woke up in the ICU, and I had the breather down my throat and felt like a vegetable because I couldn't move anything. I started aspirating [which occurs when an object or liquid is inhaled into either the windpipe or the lungs]. You feel like you're throwing up. You're actually drowning. You can't breathe. You can't inhale. I had no body control. I was very sharp mentally. I was literally doing calisthenics mentally -- thinking about school, upcoming lesson plans -- but when I tried to pick up my arms and pick up my feet, I was scared I was a vegetable. It felt like it was a half hour that I had no control, but I'm sure it was a matter of minutes. It was a very harrowing experience. It was traumatic.
Patrick J. Fox
AOL Health: In the book you describe that during your sixth death you saw a blinding light.
Fox: This is difficult to talk about, even now. The last time I "coded" I didn't come back when they shocked me. So the doctor gave it one more shock and turned the machine to full. So I was down a little longer than the earlier codings. I was standing in a tunnel. There was some pattern I couldn't discern. I had no pain. I was thinking like I am now. I literally thought I was standing there, cognizant of everything around me, standing. All the pain was gone. It was a very cleansing feeling. The light started getting brighter. I wasn't walking toward it. It was a very comforting feeling. Suddenly, everything went black. It went from bright to actually black to hearing the conversation from doctors and nurses.
Stephanie Fox: Patrick Fox at the hospital
AOL Health: How did dying -- and nearly not reviving -- change your outlook on life?
Fox: When you go through a life-changing experience like this, you reevaluate everything. I thinned out my herd of horses. I had seven, and now I have three. My wife likes horses but she doesn't have a passion for them like I do. I'm the horse person, and I felt horrible that I might put her in a position where she had a lot of responsibility that she shouldn't have to have should this happen again.
Jennifer Fox : Patrick Fox riding his horse
AOL Health: Were you worried that you might not survive?
Fox: This is hard to talk about sometimes. I knew I couldn't talk, but it didn't connect mentally that it was because I had a breathing device down my throat. With the aspirating -- in which black fluid just comes out of your throat -- I had no warning, no feeling that it was coming. It just erupted like a volcano. I was literally drowning on my own fluid. I'm sure someone [was explaining why this was happening], but I tell you, I heard them say "Relax, relax, relax," but when you're drowning it's easier said than done.
Annette Hackbarth: The Fox family in New York a year after the heart attack
Life After Dying
Fox: It's not something I live thinking about all the time. [My doctors] have no idea why or how it occurred. I'm on a lot of different medicines right now. I've had a lot of different tests. The stent [a wire mesh tube inserted into a blood vessel which can prevent small pieces of plaque from breaking off and causing a heart attack] looks great. There's no reason for a heart attack to ever happen again. But I think that for any person who's had a heart attack it's an ongoing concern. It's always in the back of one's mind, "Am I taking care of myself? Am I working out enough?"
I do power-walking, which elevates your heart rate and that, hopefully, takes care of problems. I look rather goofy walking around town doing it. I do it three or four times a week for about 45 minutes. Before, I was on cholesterol-lowering medicine and aspirin. Before, I worked out a lot. I trained horses. But there's a difference. Even professional athletes have massive heart attacks and die. There's a difference between being in shape and being in heart shape. You can do sprints all you want and work out your heart, but then you stop and give it a breath. That's not what keeps your heart in shape. With a power walk, you keep your heart rate up and push yourself to keep going and get your heart going stronger and stronger and stronger. In addition to[medication for depression and post-traumatic stress], I'm also on seven or eight different types of heart-related medicine.
Next: How Patrick Fox Recovered from His Widow-Maker Heart Attack
