Local Woman Beats the Odds of Cardiac Arrest February 5, 2024 Lynn Wiles of Albany knows firsthand that heart attack symptoms can be different in women. You could say she learned the hard way. Subtle Symptoms Ignored The COVID-19 pandemic was well underway and a domino effect of local nonprofit closures and service cuts resulted in layoffs in her department at a local agency where her team provided job-placement assistance for developmentally disabled community members. Worries about her clients, co-workers and staff added to the stress of navigating her life, career and being there for her family in the midst of the global pandemic. So, when she started noticing subtle symptoms, she figured she was suffering from anxiety. “I did have a tightening in my chest,” she said. “If you make a fist and imagine that being inside of your chest cavity, that is what it felt like. And not super, super tight.” She became easily fatigued and started taking naps during the day – despite having never before been a napper. “One time when I was gardening, I laid down on the lawn, I felt so tired,” she said. Both of her arms tingled and her hands felt achy. “It’s hard to explain, but I felt outside of my body,” Lynn said. “It felt very bizarre. I just thought ‘What the heck?’ I thought I was having anxiety attacks.” She did think it was strange when her cat suddenly started laying on her chest. Though her family has a history of heart disease, her blood pressure was normal and she practiced a healthy lifestyle and diet. She had no idea she had a 99% blockage in the left anterior descending artery of her heart, but she thinks the cat knew. The Big Event Lynn had been experiencing symptoms for 10 days when it happened. She and her husband, Kent, spent the morning of July 31, 2020, running errands. As they were unloading groceries from the car, her husband came into the house with the last few bags to find his wife on the dining room floor. She wasn’t moving. Her eyes were half open and she was making a strange gurgling sound. (This gurgling sound was agonal breathing and indicated that Lynn was near death.) Kent checked for her pulse and found none. As her lips started turning blue, he called 911, put the phone on speaker mode and started CPR – which he’d learned more than 40 years ago as a lifeguard in college but had never needed to do. Following the instructions of the 911 operator, Kent did chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After several minutes, a neighbor who is a physician’s assistant heard the commotion, came in the open front door and took over performing CPR. When the paramedics arrived a short while later, they took over CPR and administered shocks with an automated external defibrillator, or AED. After establishing a pulse, the paramedics rushed Lynn to Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center where doctors concluded she had suffered a heart attack caused by the blockage in her artery. The heart attack (caused, essentially, by a plumbing problem in the heart) triggered the cardiac arrest (an electrical failure). She woke up later in the ICU to find Kent had saved her life by calling 911 and immediately starting CPR. A stent had been placed in her heart. She was going to be OK. Beating the Odds According to the American Heart Association, cardiac arrests that happen outside a hospital claim the lives of nearly 350,000 people in the United States each year. Only about 10% of those who experience these events survive. So many things lined up for Lynn that day to keep her on the “alive” side of this statistic. Her husband usually worked long days as a social worker serving seniors with disabilities, and it happened to be his day off. Trained in CPR, Kent knew what to do. Their neighbor, the physician’s assistant, stepped up to help. Paramedics from the Albany Fire Department responded quickly and got her heart going again and at Good Sam, doctors opened up the artery with a stent and started her on her path to recovery. “My husband calls me a walking miracle,” Lynn said. Hindsight is 20-20, but Lynn knows now that she should have had the symptoms checked out by a doctor. “I just wanted to be OK for my husband, daughter and cat,” she said when considering why she did not pay closer attention to her symptoms. “Women, and moms especially, a lot of them don’t pay attention to their symptoms and deny them so that they will be OK for everyone else. Working With Heroes After a couple of pandemic career pivots, Lynn decided to apply for a position with Samaritan Health Services. Friends recommended Samaritan as a good place to work and she was thrilled when she was offered two job interviews. She started working as a medical office receptionist for Samaritan Cardiology in the fall of 2023. Her experience as a patient adds a level of passionate engagement to her work with cardiac patients. “There have been times when patients have expressed extreme anxiety to me and I have let them know I am a patient as well. I’m able to tell them ‘You are in really good hands here,’” Lynn said. It is a continual inspiration for Lynn to work with the team that saved her life and assisted in her recovery and ongoing cardiac care, including Matthew Lindberg, MD, her cardiologist, Family Nurse Practitioner Brandy Sprick and Medical Assistant Hugo Kyriss. She met Dimitri Greschner, MD, the interventional cardiologist who had placed her stent, after a couple of months on the job, on the Friday before New Year’s Eve. Lynn introduced herself to him and told him he was the one who had placed her stent and helped save her life. “I put out both my hands to shake his hand,” Lynn said. “I got choked up. It’s really emotional. Dr. Greschner and Dr. Lindberg and the whole care team will forever be my heroes.” Learn more about how heart attack symptoms can be different for women.
