Heart Pain? Go to the Emergency Department. One Young Man’s Story
In September 2023, on the Sunday night before Labor Day, Robert Reynolds woke up with a strange sensation. A sudden squeezing pain moved up his chest and settled into the base of his spine. He jumped out of bed and stood in the doorway, trying to catch his breath.
“I was trying to calm down,” he recalled. “I hate inconveniencing anyone so I laid back down in bed, hoping it was something that would eventually just go away on its own.”
In his early 40s, Robert was in good health. He went to the gym every day, walked the family’s yellow lab several miles each night and was training for a strenuous rim-to-rim hike at the Grand Canyon the following year. The next morning, he felt OK enough for a family outing at the St. Louis Zoo in 100-degree heat. But when they arrived home, he was in bed by 7 p.m. By Tuesday morning, he knew he needed medical attention.
After visiting an urgent care, a stress test was recommended. But when a technician did a sonogram before Robert stepped on the treadmill, the atmosphere suddenly changed. “Don’t move,” the technician told him.
The sonogram showed an aortic dissection, a life-threatening medical emergency where the inner layer of the aorta tears and allows blood to flow between the layers of the aortic wall, causing it to separate and weaken.
Robert would require open heart surgery.
He remembers asking the technician: “Am I going to die?” and being wheeled through Springfield Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Department. By 7 p.m., he was in surgery with Stephen Hazelrigg, MD, a leading cardiothoracic surgeon with SIU School of Medicine.
For Laura, the suddenness of Robert’s diagnosis was confusing. She got to Memorial and settled into the waiting room, sick with worry.
“Dr. Hazelrigg came out around 1 a.m. to tell me what happened,” she said. “He was very calm and informative, explaining things with such patience. He even drew up a diagram on a piece of paper from my purse. He and the nursing staff prepared me for how Robert would look when I finally got back there to see him. I was 36 years old. We had always been very healthy. After 15 years of marriage, this wasn’t something on the radar.”
Laura appreciated the care he received throughout those initial hours of surgery and afterward. Robert’s surgery was successful, and after a few days in the hospital, he returned home and began the recovery process. He still wonders why he experienced an aortic dissection, with no family or personal heart history and no connective tissue disorder.
Robert realizes how fortunate he is to have survived. Delaying medical attention when experiencing chest pain can be highly risky. Chest pain can also indicate other life-threatening conditions like a pulmonary embolism or as in Robert’s case, aortic dissection.
“No matter what age, if you experience chest pain, you should go to the Emergency Department for prompt evaluation,” said Akindele Adaramola, MD, MPH, SFHM, vice president and chief medical officer for Springfield Memorial Hospital. “The ED team is equipped to perform key tests to assess heart function and identify potential heart issues. Immediate diagnosis and treatment are crucial to increasing the odds of survival.”
Today, Robert is completely back to normal. He’s back in the gym. He and his family were able to go on the Disney trip they’d been planning the night he began to feel ill. With Dr. Hazelrigg’s blessing, he even did the 26-mile, rim-to-rim hike at the Grand Canyon the following summer.
“This was a very unexpected thing that happened, and I was very determined to get through it and get back to living life,” Robert said of the aortic dissection. “Doing the last leg of the Grand Canyon hike, straight up hill, was when everything sunk in.
“Once I could collect my thoughts and got to the very top – it felt like my life flashed before my eyes. I felt the most alive I had ever felt.”
Need emergency care?
In the event of an emergency, call 9-1-1 and go to your nearest emergency room:
- Decatur Memorial Hospital Emergency Department
- Jacksonville Memorial Hospital Emergency Department
- Lincoln Memorial Hospital Emergency Department
- Springfield Memorial Hospital Emergency Department
- Taylorville Memorial Hospital Emergency Department
Additional Expertise
Memorial Specialty Care Cardiology