A 10-year heart check-up

August 20th, 1999 (10 years ago today). This was the 6th day of our amazing honeymoon.
We were enjoying the hot weather and the view from our balcony in Tucson, Arizona. In a couple hours, we would be on our way for reception #2 in New Mexico.
10 year ago today, my father, James Russell Brandser, died of a Myocardial Infarction (heart attack) at the age of 49. He had just began his work day in Fargo, North Dakota. Apparently, he collapsed on the job in the early morning hours. 911 was called. Paramedics tried to revive him. He died at a downtown hospital a couple miles away.

According to the American Heart Association, www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4591, coronary heart disease (CHD) accounted for 445, 687 deaths in the United States in 2005 (about 1 of every 5 deaths).

We arrived at the ranch near Church Rock, New Mexico, in the early evening hours 10 years ago. The first thing my mother-in-law, Pamela, told me was to call my mom. Strange, I thought. I had never given my mom my in-laws' phone number. Somehow, she got ahold of it.

My mother told me the news. I was shocked. Many tears flowed that night and during the days that followed.

Within the next week, I examined the details of my dad's short trip in the ambulance. Apparently, he was in Ventricular Fibrillation www.medmovie.com/mmdatabase/MediaPlayer.aspx?ClientID=65&TopicID=745 when the medics found him. Called V fib for short, this is a life-threatening condition in which the heart's electrical activity becomes disordered. When this occurs, the heart's lower (pumping) chambers contract in a rapid, unsynchronized manner. (The ventricles "flutter" rather than beat.) The heart pumps little to no blood.

My dad's death was unfortunate. Everyone talked about how "young he was" and how it "happened unexpectedly." In some ways, I agreed. However, my dad had told me years before that my grandfather (his dad) died at age 50. Another relative had told me that "most of the men" on my dads' side of the family died around that age.

When dad died, I was working in a cardiac unit at Avera Mckennan Hospital www.mckennan.org/amck/index.aspx in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I was getting ready to start my 2nd semester of nursing school. I had a desire to work with heart patients due to my family history. My dad's death fueled that passion all the more when he died.

For the last 8 years, my greatest passion at Northwest Hospital & Medical Center www.nwhospital.org/ has been working with heart surgery patients and heart attack survivors. I often wonder what it would be like to see my dad walk out of the hospital alive and well. He never had that chance. But it brings joy to my heart to see heart surgery patients and heart attack survivors go home with their spouses and to their families.

Dad, thanks for the memories.

(Picture above: James Brandser [right] with wife Linda)

By Brian Brandser, RN, BSN, CCRN, CLNC