Patient Profile: Harold Watson

On Saturday, August 13, 2005, Harold Watson suffered a heart attack. In less than 40 minutes after he arrived at Memorial Medical Center, he was diagnosed, treated and on the road to recovery.

8:35 a.m. Harold and Trudy Watson started their day helping out at their daughter’s garage sale. Within an hour, Harold began having difficulty breathing and felt an enormous pressure on his chest. Trudy feared Harold may have been having a heart attack.

9:59 a.m. “We met Harold and his wife at the door,” said Betty Retherford, an RN in Memorial’s emergency department. “She had called ahead, so our team was already in motion.” Within minutes, Harold was evaluated, had an EKG and a diagnosis that he was having a heart attack.

“I remember four nurses and two doctors working on me,” Harold said. “It was incredible teamwork.”

10:29 a.m. With the EKG results in hand, the team rushed Harold to the heart cath lab to receive life-saving stents by Dr. Tony DeMartini with Prairie Cardiovascular cardiologists.

10:34 a.m. Suddenly things took a turn for the worse. “When we were prepping Mr. Watson for the stent implantation, his heart stopped,” said Dr. DeMartini. The heart cath lab team and Dr. DeMartini quickly revived him and completed the procedure.

10:37 a.m. In less than 40 minutes from arrival, Harold Watson had two stents implanted and was on the road to recovery.

TODAY, Harold is feeling fine and is back at work at Draperies Unique, the business he and his wife own and operate.

In a heart attack situation like Harold Watson’s, re-establishing blood flow to the heart is critical. The shorter the time, the better the results. The Memorial Medical Center emergency department physicians and staff, working closely with Memorial Heart and Vascular Institute’s cardiologists, have achieved results that rank in the top 10 percent of all hospitals in the nation.