Taylor Leddin-McMaster (Host): Welcome back to the Well Within Reach podcast, brought to you by Riverside Healthcare. I'm your host, Taylor Leddin-McMaster. And joining us today is Steve, who is here to talk about a heart episode that took him through the Emergency Department to the Heart and Vascular Institute to home health, and to here, which is Cardiopulmonary Rehab.

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Host: Thanks for joining us today, Steve.

Steve Piekarczyk: Thank you.

Host: We really appreciate you telling us your story. And before we get into that, can you tell us just a little bit about yourself?

Steve Piekarczyk: I'm 62 years old. I work for the railroad in Chicago, intermodal yard, putting away trains and building trains. My hobbies, I like to cook, I like to garden. And I'm back to my life now after my episode. I just returned to work after being off 11 months. I do anything I can to help you out here.

Host: Yeah. Yeah. We appreciate you being open about your story. So, you said about 11 months since you'd gone back to work. So, it was about last year when you started feeling short of breath. And what did you initially chalk this up to?

Steve Piekarczyk: Well, at first, I thought it might be something like asthma, because my brother was recently diagnosed after having received stents a year or two before. And I was having some of the same kind of issues he was having, so I got an inhaler from him. And at times, it seemed like it helped a little bit, but it wasn't helping.

Host: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Piekarczyk: Because I wasn't having asthma, I was having heart attacks.

Host: Yeah. And was this your first heart-related incident?

Steve Piekarczyk: Yes.

Host: Yeah. So. You know, you were trying the inhaler, that was helping a little bit, but not a ton. At what point did you realize something is very wrong and "I need immediate medical attention"?

Steve Piekarczyk: Well, when I wasn't getting relief immediately from that, I started thinking I better do something about this. And last August, I had a week's vacation coming up, so I thought I'll try and get in to see my doctor a couple days before my vacation. So if I have to have a little bit of time off for a test or whatever, I would be off. Well, I couldn't get in to see my doctor for like 14 or 17 days from when I went in. And four days later, I had heart attacks. I started having severe symptoms about midnight, what would be Saturday morning. And for the next 36 hours, I stayed home and felt bad. And I called my brother and I'm like, "Hey, take me to the hospital. I don't feel right."

Host: Yeah.

Steve Piekarczyk: And I went in, and I told them I'm having some chest pains. And it took them about two minutes to get my name and my birthdate and back in the back we went. And they did EKG. And immediately, she's like, "Oh, I see something here." So, they did a blood test to check for a marker if you have a heart attack or anything. And a normal reading is below 50 and mine was 11,600.

Host: Oh, my gosh.

Steve Piekarczyk: And they're like, "Yeah, there's definitely an issue here." So, they called to get an echocardiogram. And once they saw that, the cardiologist came in and he just pointed at me and said, "You don't move, you don't eat, you don't drink, you don't go to the bathroom. You don't take anything. You don't do anything except lay there unless we tell you to. And you might survive this. You are in very critical condition."

Host: Wow.

Steve Piekarczyk: "And you've definitely had a major incident."

Host: That's a lot going on at once. Were you registering? What happened?

Steve Piekarczyk: That all happened the first three hours.

Host: Yeah. What was going through your mind?

Steve Piekarczyk: Well, the only thing I could do is exactly what they told me. So, I told them, "I'm going to be your best patient. If you tell me don't move, I don't move." And that's what I did. And the next morning, I had the angiogram. And immediately, they saw that I had extensive problems. And they went in through my wrist. And all of a sudden, I feel them in my groin. And what they were doing was putting in a heart pump to help my heart pump. It was so damaged that I needed the pump until I had the surgery. And it just happened Dr. Alexander, the surgeon, was in the hospital. And while they were doing that, they called him in so he could actually look what was going on in real time. And right then and there, he said, "Okay, I'll take this one." And he started planning my surgery right then and there.

Host: Wow. Okay.

Steve Piekarczyk: And then, I had the surgery on a Wednesday. I still had the heart pump. I had it for four days, they took it out on Friday. And, on Saturday, I coded. So, my sister was in the room with me, and I just fell out and she ran out in the hall screaming. My nurse came right in. And she ran back out in the hall, "I got a code. I got a code." And my sister said within about 30 seconds, there was 20 people in that room. And I had 10 or 12 pumps on those little stands, and all of the lines coming in, I was 240 pounds, and they started chest compressions while I was in the chair. They lifted me up, still doing chest compressions, got me into the bed. And within three minutes of chest compressions, they zapped me back to life.

Host: Wow.

Steve Piekarczyk: And they said I woke up and I go, "What the hell happened?"

Host: Yeah. That's got to be quite a frenzy.

Steve Piekarczyk: But I don't remember that because I actually woke up about 26 or 27 hours later on a ventilator and everything. And then, they scheduled me for a pacemaker, and I had that put in the following Wednesday.

Host: Okay. So, that was the next step.

Steve Piekarczyk: I had three procedures in eight days.

Host: Wow. Yeah. So, that is obviously not only taking a toll on your heart, but your whole body, your--

Steve Piekarczyk: Yeah. I was tired after that.

Host: Yeah, I would imagine. So, what was the next thing in the treatment process? How long were you in the hospital for? What did that look like?

Steve Piekarczyk: Because I coded, they considered that a major setback. And I ended up being 11 days in the ICU. And then, I got moved to a rehab area in the hospital for six more days where they just were getting me up and having me walk and sit in a chair and get up out of a chair. Just starting to get the basics of life back. And the goal, I think, was to walk 600 feet for that program. And once I completed that, they let me out, then I went to home healthcare. I went to my sister's house in Manteno. She's got a single-level house.

Host: Oh, nice. Okay.

Steve Piekarczyk: There was only one step to get in and out. She had blacktop driveway, and a big concrete area where I could walk.

Host: Yeah. So, a little more comfortable there?

Steve Piekarczyk: Yeah. And that program lasted, I think, three weeks. And the beginning, the goal on the first day was to walk for two minutes. And three weeks later, the goal was to walk for 20 minutes. And after that, I went back to my house because then I figured I could get through a day by myself.

Host: Yeah. And how we're hitting those goals?

Steve Piekarczyk: I made them just as expected. And then, I came here and did my 36 sessions, so three months. And my insurance covered all of that. And then, you can go private pay if you want to continue. And my doctor was like, yeah, they thought it was a great idea. Rehab here thought it was a great idea. So, I did another 36 sessions. So, I came three times a week for six months.

Host: Okay. Yeah.

Steve Piekarczyk: And by then it was May 1st, and I figured it's nice outside. And I want to do my garden and get back to work. And I managed to get back to work in only nine weeks because I started Monday.

Host: That's amazing. Well, congratulations on getting back to work.

Steve Piekarczyk: Thank you.

Host: That's exciting. So when people come here, what can they expect to do at cardio rehab if they're not familiar with it? What kind of things did they have you do?

Steve Piekarczyk: Well, the first thing they do is like an initial evaluation where they ask you questions, see how you're feeling. They take your blood pressure or get some baseline. They hook you to a monitor and start getting a baseline on what's going on with your heart. And then, you do some simple exercises. They see how fast you can walk down the hallway. They record all of this, and then that's it for the first day. Then, you come back and you start on the machines.

And basically, you just go through the motions the first two or three days, they want to see how your body reacts and your heart reacts, and most people are still tired from the surgery and everything, so it's to bring you on slowly. But then, after a week or so, they're like, "Okay, you can pick up the pace just a little bit." And they use what's called METs, metabolic equivalents, to gauge how much work you're doing. Like sitting in this chair right now, we would be using like 1 MET. And the goal is when you're starting out to get to 3 METs, so that's like just going through the motions on the bike or just walking real slow on the treadmill. But by the time it was done, I was up between 7 and 8 range for METs, like say on the treadmill. And by then, you got sweat dripping off the treadmill and my shirt was soaked and I was breathing heavy.

Host: It's like a workout montage.

Steve Piekarczyk: But you manage to work up to that. Yeah.

Host: And so, where exactly are you at now in your recovery journey?

Steve Piekarczyk: Just on long-term maintenance. My doctor's appointments now are every pretty much six months or so. I do labs every six months and things like that. I'm back to work. This program and these people gave me my life back. I would say I'm at about 80% of what I used to do. And like the doctor said, you're going to have a new normal, you're going to reach a new plateau. But the plateau I have reached is good enough where I can go to work and I can live my life the way I want to, other than drinking Manhattans, I quit that, but that's the only thing that's really changed. I eat a little better too.

Host: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's hard to probably say how long before you noticed discomfort that things may have been going on.

Steve Piekarczyk: Oh, I figure two to three years.

Host: Yeah? Because I was going to ask, how do you feel comparatively to two, three years ago?

Steve Piekarczyk: Better.

Host: Yeah. Yeah. That's what I like to hear.

Steve Piekarczyk: Significantly better.

Host: Okay.

Steve Piekarczyk: Yeah. No discomfort. I can go out there and give it a pretty good effort at work and put in a full day's work.

Host: Yeah. I would imagine it's pretty laborious job that you're doing...

Steve Piekarczyk: It can be. Yeah.

Host: Well, that's great that you're feeling better. And I'm curious what advice you would give to people who might be experiencing something similar to you where they're having discomfort, where they're thinking, "This is different than what I'm used to, but maybe it's not so serious," what do you tell them?

Steve Piekarczyk: The same thing your doctor tells you, don't wait too long. Going to ask your doctor for a test is a whole lot cheaper than coming in, getting the full gamut like I did, of everything that they offer.

Host: Yeah. To that point, you got to experience a lot of different facets of Riverside.

Steve Piekarczyk: I saw lots of it.

Host: Would you recommend that to people if...?

Steve Piekarczyk: Absolutely. Yeah. The stars aligned for me. For anything bad that was happening, riverside came in and they fixed everything. Right from the beginning, the staff was professional, well-organized, friendly. And there are some real top of the line people there that are just exceptional. I don't wish anyone to have to go through what I went through. Get checked out early to avoid it. But if you have to go the route that I did, I picked the right place to go to.

Host: Well, great. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your story. And thank you to the listeners for tuning into Well Within Reach podcast. To learn more about our heart services here at Riverside, go to myrhc.net/heart.