How I survived a heart attack

Many of my friends have asked me about how my heart attack happened. This is my story.

Besides recapping the sequence of events that took place, my account also highlights the crucial roles that my Christian community and prayers played during my medical emergency.

According to research by Blue Zones, people who attend faith-based services four times per month will add 4-14 years of life expectancy. Source: Buettner, D., Reverse Engineering Longevity, Blue Zones, https://www.bluezones.com/2016/11/power-9/ accessed on 13 March 2024

In my case, it helped to save my life.

How my heart attack happened

On 20th March 2023, a Monday, I was accompanying my wife, Kooi Hoon, at the hospital where she was receiving her chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. Kooi Hoon was diagnosed with stage 2A breast cancer slightly over a month earlier.

While waiting for her session to be completed, I experienced a discomfort across my chest. It was not painful, but the hard to describe experience was out of the norm.

Upon completion of her treatment, we made our way to our car for the journey home. It crossed my mind to visit the accident and emergency (A&E) unit to check on my discomfort. However, I brushed aside the idea, discounting it to be unlikely anything serious.

While driving home, the discomfort became more pronounced. That was the point that I realized that I needed medical attention. I did not tell Kooi Hoon about my condition so as not to alarm her. I focused on my driving. Upon reaching our car park, the pain came.

I told Kooi Hoon about my condition and that I needed to go to the clinic. I told her to return home on her own. By then, I also felt numbness on my arms. Even at that point, we did not suspect that I was having a heart attack.

Would you like us to call an ambulance for you?

The clinic was crowded, and I was told by the clinic assistants that I needed to wait for more than an hour to see the doctor. I requested to be attended to immediately as the pain was becoming unbearable. The doctor instructed the clinic assistants to do an electrocardiogram test on me. The test result confirmed that I was suffering a heart attack. The doctor asked if I needed assistance in calling for an ambulance. In my mind, I thought “what do you think?” I answer, “yes please.”

While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I called Kooi Hoon to inform her about my heart attack. She was shocked. After the whole incident, she shared that she was crying after she received the news. As she was undergoing chemotherapy and hence her immunity was weak, she could not come to the clinic to see me nor visit me at the hospital subsequently. Faced with a situation where she could not do anything more, she collected her emotion and decided that the best thing that she could do was not to make matters worse by not taking care of herself. She needed to make sure that she was well nourished while undergoing her chemotherapy treatments. So, she ate her lunch while crying. Till this day, I am very proud of her calm response in the mist of our trauma.

The other person I tried to contact to contact was my Pastor, Pastor Simon Tan. I tried to message him using Telegram. I typed “Ps” (my shortform for “Pastor”), but I did not have the strength to type further. I think my incomplete message got him worried. My wife concurrently informed him about my condition. Pastor Simon and his wife Molly rushed to the clinic to see me.

Flashback two days before

At this point, I would like to flashback to 18th March, the Saturday just 2 days before my heart attack.

Kooi Hoon and I are members of Faith Community Baptist Church. We attend church service every Saturday evening. The preacher on 18 March was Pastor Poh Wee Long and he preached a sermon entitled “The Pride of Prayerlessness”. The key point of the message was that Christians who do not pray or do not pray enough deprive themselves of God’s gift of:

• Intimacy – where we embrace God’s presence
• Intercession – where we encounter God’s power

That message left a deep impression in my heart that night. Little did I realize then what an impact it would have on me two days later. Through the sermon, God was preparing me to face the biggest battle of my life. In fact, it was the biggest battle for my life.

Screenshot taken off @fcbcsg YouTube channel

I was moved to respond to the message by taking actions. I loved to study the Bible, but my prayer life was something that I needed to work on more.

Very early the next morning on 19th March, I woke up when everyone else in the family were still asleep, and I went to my living room to spend some quiet moments in worship, reflections, and prayers.

God is present and powerful

Then, in the evening of that day, I did my regular bible study and it happened that the topic was on the almightiness of God. I learned that there are two aspects of God’s almightiness:

• God is omnipresent – God is present in all places and God can give entire attention to all individuals at the same time.

• God is omnipotent – God is powerful to do everything.

These two aspects were similar to the sermon message the day before.

The next morning, which was the day where I had my heart attack, I woke up early again to spent my quiet moments. I started praying by asking God what I should focus on that morning. I sensed a voice in my heart saying that I should reflect on the topic that I studied the night before – the omnipresent and omnipotent of God. I was also prompted in my heart to listen to these two worship songs:

• You are here
• Be Magnified

The themes of two songs were in exact alignment with the sermon message on Saturday and my Bible study topic the night before!

Prior symptoms

My friends also asked me if there were any symptoms prior to my heart attack. There were two. At the beginning of 2023, my blood pressure readings were more than 140/90 mm Hg, which were at hypertension levels. The morning before my heart attack, I was walking up a slope when I felt a sense of breathlessness. That had not happened to me before.

Emergency room

After the ambulance personnel arrived at the clinic, what followed were exactly what one would normally watch on television dramas pertaining to such medical scenarios.

Siren from the ambulance sounded throughout my journey to the nearest hospital, which was Khoo Teck Puat hospital. The ambulance medics were attentive and reassuring. They forewarned me that the ride might be bumpy along the way. Upon arrival at the A&E bay, a nurse was standing by to guide the medics in moving me to the allocated bed.

In the A&E ward, the procedures to prepare me for operations were swiftly executed. All personnel involved carried out their respective roles like clockwork. One nurse, whom I reckoned was the most senior, reassured me not to be alarmed by all the activities taking place as they were standard procedures for such situations. With documents of consent and indemnity signed and next-of-kin contact given to the doctor, I was wheeled to the operations theatre in no time.

The surgeon with the colourful head wrap

I was given anaesthesia to my right arm where the surgeon would be inserting a flexible tube into my blood vessel and guiding the tube to my heart for the ballooning (coronary angioplasty) and stent procedure. They also shaved my right groin area as an alternate entry point (also known as the femoral approach) in case insertion was not possible through my arms.

I was conscious throughout the operations and I must say, the experience was an eye-opener.

For a start, my surgeon was wearing a colour head wrap instead of a hospital head cover which one would have expected. That might had been helpful in calming any nerve that I might have had.

I could also see at least a couple of robotic arms moving above me during operation. I guessed that these were equipment that were scanning my heart that enabled my surgeon see my arteries through live x-ray images. Besides the surgeon, there were many other assistants in the room, though not all of them were visible to me from my eye level. As the surgeon gave instructions, I could hear the assistants echoing back the instructions, not unlike in military operations.

While these activities were ongoing, I was mesmerized by the technology around me. I was also impressed by the very coordinated procedures. The thought that went through my mind was, “wow, we humans are amazing! We could come out with these amazing technology and operational procedures to save our own lives.” It reminded me, there and then, that we are very smart creatures only because we are created in the image of a creative God. The following words from the Bible came to my mind as I was being operated:

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” – Genesis 1:26

God was in the operating theatre with me

Throughout the operation, besides the distractions of activities that were taking place around me, I was otherwise calm. I had to occupy my mind while lying on the operations bed. That was when I thought about the lessons that I learned over the two days before: “God is omnipresent – God is here in the operating theatre with me now” and “God is omnipotent – God can heal me.” The one time when death crossed my mind was when I told God that I was not ready to die yet because my will and post-death instructions to my family were not prepared.

I believe that I was calm because God had prepared me for this ordeal. Interestingly, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine shared an article about how practices such as prayers can activate relaxation response in our bodies and reduce stress. Source: Baban K. A., Morton D. P., (2022) ‘ Lifestyle Medicine and Stress Management’, Supplement to The Journal of Family Practice, Vol 71, No 1, pp. S24-S29. For me, it was not prayers that calmed me but my omnipresent and omnipotent God whom I offered my prayers to who calmed me.

The amusing thing was that I did not realize that the surgeon was already carrying out the ballooning and stent insertion procedures from the start. I thought that they were only carrying out more tests on me before moving me to another room for the actual procedures.

After some time, I asked the surgeon when they would be operating on me and he told me (I am sure to his amusement) that they were already almost done!

It turned out that my main artery was 100% blocked.

Reflections

I started the year 2023 with this in mind: “I will plan for my life as though I have 30 more years to live but I will live my life as though this is the final calendar year of my life”.

What happened to me is a stark reminder that no matter how detailed our plans are, life is fragile and can take unexpected detours and life is brief and can be briefer than we expect.

I am grateful for:

1. God’s goodness and protection that was so evident in my time of trouble
2. Support from my family members, friends, colleagues, and spiritual family from church
3. Singapore’s excellent medical services

Since my heart procedures, my blood pressure readings are now at a healthy level of below 120/80 mm Hg. I have also lost 10 kilograms with the adoption of healthier diets and post-surgery cardiac rehabilitation at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and Singapore Heart Foundation.

My wife and I are also pursuing a holistic wellness lifestyle through our own framework R.E.S.T, our acronym for the following four pillars of health and wellness:

We will share about our health and wellness journey and learnings using this framework in our blog.

To end my story, I would like to share two videos of the worship songs which I sang on the morning of 20th March.