♪ [music]
♪ - [Angela]
I have a wonderful husband. God has blessed us with two kids, Gabriel and Mason, and they continue to make me proud every day. They like to do a lot and like to go a lot, and I want to be able to do those things with them. I knew something was wrong, because I couldn't take a shower without being tired.
I was at work and thought I had heartburn. I went in the bathroom and I kind of sulked down to the floor. One of the girls came in the bathroom and she said, "You don't look well." She took me back to her office and had someone check my blood pressure.
He looked at me and he said, "I don't want to alarm you but I think you're having some type of cardiac event." He said, "I'm about to call the ambulance." ♪ [music]
♪ After a minute or so, I was out of breath. The tech said, she was like, "You're in distress, but there's not showing up." She goes, "I can't let you keep going." My family doctor, Dr.
Frazine, talked to me for like 45 minutes because he was like, "You were just here 3 weeks ago for your annual checkup. All my bloodwork, everything was fine." So he was like, "I'm going to admit you." We get down to the hospital.
They get me in a room, and then Dr. Faulkner walks in.
- [Dr. Faulkner]
A lot of patients will have symptoms that just don't quite add up. And in Angela's case, she knew her body and she knew that what she was experiencing was not right.
- He talked to me for about an hour. He said, "I'm just going to do a heart cath." Before he left, he stood there and he said, "Do you mind if I pray with you all?" And when he walked out, Tony and I said, "This was the perfect person.
He's going to figure out what's wrong." I'm awake through the whole thing, and I hear him say, "Angela, everything looks good," he goes, "but I'm going to take one more look." And I was like, "Okay," and so he goes back through and all I hear him say is, "I found it."
- Spontaneous coronary artery dissection sometimes are a little bit tricky to visualize. With Ms. Copeland's presentation, at first glance, the arteries looked okay. However, symptoms didn't support that so we took another closer look at the arteries and, after looking at this multiple times, we're able to find an area that just didn't quite look right.
And so we stopped there, reviewed all the images, and then decided that that's probably what this was and so decided to make an attempt to try to open this vessel up.
- With this condition, it doesn't show up in any bloodwork. Nothing shows up. The only way you can see it is a heart cath, and you've got to be looking very carefully to even find it. I had a balloon put into the artery, and I've been fine since.
- We have a great team of cardiologists, cardiac surgeons. Our administrators are nurses. Everybody involved in the patient's care from the time they walk in the door to the time they exit the building I think provide nothing but the best of care for our patients.
- It chokes me up sometimes thinking about it because I could have died, and he found it, and he has taken very good care of me ever since. He really digs deep into what's going on and wants to know if there's anything he can do at any time, and his staff has been really great, too. That's the culture of Baptist Health Paducah.
- Behind every patient story is actually the patient themselves and the life that they live outside of this acute sickness that they have, and you need to try to help those patients to not only get better for themselves but to be around for those people that they love and they want to care for.
- Tomorrow is not promised and so we just try to live every day to the fullest. I feel like the right people were in the right place at the right time. ♪ [music]
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