At first, I didn’t think much about it. I was working at the Hospital in Moncton and was feeling pain in my arms and my back. As an electrician, I was lifting heavy things, so I figured I’d pulled a muscle. I walked around to the Emergency Department and took a number. Just to be safe.
I was seen quickly, but the doctor didn’t think it was my back, he thought it was my heart. He did some tests. And it was my heart. I had a hard time believing it. While the doctors were looking at my CT, I stood up out of my chair.
I fell. Hard.
Code Blue.
I was dead.
Doctors, nurses, clot busters, the whole shooting match. I was revived. I was alive. And immediately in an ambulance heading to the Saint John Regional Hospital.
I don’t remember much, but my heart procedure went well. I got a stent and the blockages were cleared up. My wife Lucie and I thought I would be going home. But things took a turn for the worse.
When I fell at the hospital in Moncton, I hit my head. I was bleeding inside my skull.
Dr. Kolyvas, the neurosurgeon, told Lucie if I stay like that, I die. And if they operate, I still might die.
But my family was confident in Dr. Kolyvas and told him to go ahead and do the operation.
Here I am, 9 years later.
Lots has happened since that November. Additions to the family…. Grand kids and everything. It wasn’t my time.
One year after I got well, I drove to Saint John to thank the man who saved my life, Dr. Kolyvas. There’s no way you don’t thank the man who saved your life, right?