FEBRUARY 2016
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
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well. He had had four previous heart attacks, so he was
familiar with the symptoms. He quickly pulled his truck
over and had his wife call 911.
He remembers getting into the ambulance, but not
much after that. Polk was taken to WRMC’s cath lab
where a stent was used to open his blocked artery. But
that’s not the end of the story for Polk. The next day, a
blood clot caused another heart attack while he was still
in the hospital. He went back to the cath lab and an angioplasty was used to repair an additional blockage. “It
was a pretty rough two days, but the doctors and nurses,
without them and God, I wouldn’t be here,” said Polk.
Polk was supposed to be heading to Albuquerque,
NM, and if it hadn’t been for his wife wanting to stop
and eat before his trip, he would have been in his truck
alone when the attack happened. “I’ve been really lucky.
The last four I’ve had, I’ve been in the hospital or close
by. Their work and care was wonderful. The people of
Weatherford should be happy that place is there, because
they are lifesavers,” he said.
Another patient, Nancy Ballard, canceled her family’s Thanksgiving dinner because she wasn’t feeling well
enough to cook it last November. She felt shooting pains
all day, and although she’d had another heart attack in
1992, as well as multiple heart-related procedures, the
symptoms were so different she wasn’t sure what was happening. Her pains went on all day and continued even after she went to bed that night. She awakened her husband
around11:30 p.m. and told him she was having a heart
attack.
The couple arrived at the emergency room and she
was taken to the cath lab just after midnight where the
doctors put in three stents. “Everything went well, and I
just stayed overnight. The care at WRMC was excellent,”
Ballard said. She didn’t know that WRMC had its own
cath lab, but she knew that night that she couldn’t make
it to Fort Worth for treatment. “I had planned on having a
big Thanksgiving dinner, and I told my son that morning
I just [didn’t] feel up to it,” she said. She even joked with
him that she might be having a heart attack. Ballard recovered well enough from her procedures that the family was
able to have its Thanksgiving dinner on the Saturday after
she came home.
Michelle Reeves, RN, BSN, came to WRMC four
years ago and helped to build the cardiology program.
She serves as Director of The Heart & Vascular Center.
The Center cared for more than 1,000 patients last year
and she’s looking forward to the second cath lab coming on line, not just because of the increased community
demand, but because the second lab will bring another
service line to the hospital, which is electrophysiology.
The hospital currently performs procedures with the circulatory portion of the heart, the arteries that get blocked
by plaque and clots. With the addition of the second
cath lab, “We will also service the electrical portion of
the heart. Issues like afib, aflutter, rapid heart rate and
complex pacemakers can be helped with the new equipment and physicians we have on staff,” Reeves said. Most
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patients she talks with are so grateful to have this level of
heart care and services close to home. For many patients
they can expect not just a single trip to the cath lab when
they have a heart attack or another heart -related issue,
but repeated trips throughout the rest of their lives. “Once
you have heart disease, there isn’t a cure. Those patients
will always be under the care of a cardiologist. The services we have now provide patients and families with a
choice close to home,” she continued.
The signs and symptoms that people should be looking
for if they think they are having a heart attack are shortness of breath, fatigue, not feeling like yourself and pain,
either in your chest, or for women, it’s more likely to be
in the left arm or back. Reeves suggests to all: “It’s very
important to listen to your body. If something doesn’t feel
right, go to your primary care doctor or to the ER. Our
team of ER doctors, nurses and local EMS work together
to quickly identify emergent cardiac needs in our community.”
Dr. Abbas Agha is an interventional cardiologist with
WRMC and he echoed Reeves’ excitement for additional
cath lab space at the hospital because it benefits his patients. “There has been a heart program here since 2012,
but there was no facility for patients who needed invasive or interventional therapy. If there were patients who
needed that they were transferred out of the community,”
he said. He’s proud of the quality work they are doing
at Weatherford Regional and points to the fact that the
hospital is well below the national goal for patients entering the hospital to restoring blood flow of 90 minutes.
“We are well below the national average of 60 minutes at
Weatherford Regional. We can do the same quality care
as large and established hospitals like Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins. Access to services just
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