(wind blowing)
(dramatic orchestra music)
- I've been running my entire life.
I ran professionally in marathons,
I ran in high school, college.
That is my safe space, it makes me feel good.
I'm good at it.
(sighs)
I was at my in-laws' vacation house
with my family in Gulf Shores.
As normal, I woke up in the morning for a run.
I got a, a few minutes into the run,
and I knew at that moment that something was wrong.
(starting pistol fires) (dramatic orchestra music)
I think what was going
through my head is I might be done with running entirely.
Man.
- Going back to that thought,
I knew this was not discomfort.
This was a pain like no other.
A pain that I couldn't run through.
I never not been able to power through.
Got into the doctor as soon as we got back from,
from that trip and started the process of a series of tests.
(sad music)
- [Adam] Nothing was really showing what the issue was.
Last ditch effort or last ditch test
was to do a CT angiogram.
That was May 18th.
Saturday was May 19th, I think.
I got a phone call,
I think from the on-call cardiologist at Ochsner.
Really all that was said is you need to get
to the emergency room right now.
You need to get to the emergency room right now.
- [Dr. Khuri] This is something that I would not forget.
Really, he's sitting on a time bomb.
I'm gonna find you the best picture here.
This is the left main coronary artery,
and it splits in two blood vessel.
This is the left circumflex and that's the left anterior
descending artery.
When you see the pinch, you see how the indentation is,
that shows you the blockages. With athletes that are
used to high level of training and exercise,
and marathon running,
With time there is something called ischemic precondition
that the heart get used to that and tend to function
at low levels of oxygen.
Despite having significant blockages.
The amount of heart muscle at stake
because of that blockage,
is basically 40% of the heart muscle.
So if something goes wrong and he had a heart attack,
he might drop dead just like you see in the movies.
- At that point in time, I, you know
my world's spinning and I'm just thinking about my kids.
I've got a heart related issue.
If this doesn't go well, then my kids are without a father.
As a professional runner on that starting line,
if you look left, you look right,
you can kind of tell who's, who's game on and who's not.
Dr. Khuri had that same look.
You could tell that he was a competitor,
and that he wanted to win.
There was a plan in place,
and you know everything was gonna be okay.
- So everything happened through a small, tiny hole
that's basically two millimeter.
You get access.
See the radial artery goes up here, goes all the way
up to your axilla, and then gets to be under your clavicle
and goes down and turns around to the aorta in your chest.
You see the difference.
One stent, two stents, and the blockages are gone.
- I always go back to the kind of strange, funny,
and amazing thing about this whole process is I drove myself
to the ER, had heart surgery,
and drove myself home 24 hours later, feeling fine.
I was like, okay, I'm gonna go try just a normal run
just like I normally would.
And, and I think I went out for maybe six miles,
and I'm getting excited thinking about it.
I had no pain.
I felt great.
And right then and there, I was like, oh my God, I'm back,
I'm back.
The technology that Ochsner has to do that procedure
and do it that well is unbelievable.
I couldn't imagine being anywhere else
getting that procedure done
and coming out the way that I did.
It's just amazing.