In August 2022, Rob Swercewski had just finished a 10-mile mountain bike ride and was meeting his wife and friends at the town green for a concert. Moments after setting up his lawn chair, he knew something wasn’t right. He felt a tightness in his chest and was too weak to sit up. Friends nearby noticed that he looked pale and was sweating heavily.
Swercewski, an emergency medical technician with Beacon Hose Company No. 1 in Beacon Falls, recognized the symptoms and feared he was having a heart attack. As a first responder, he had taken care of many heart attack patients before.
After 911 was called, the Beacon Hose Company ambulance and crew arrived within minutes. “They did an ECG on me right there in the chair,” he recalled. “I remember the look on their faces. They showed me the (ECG) strip and I knew.”
The ECG indicated that he was having an ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), a type of heart attack – also known as a “widow maker” – that tends to be more severe and more dangerous than other heart attacks. Time was of the essence. The ambulance crew transmitted the ECG to Waterbury Hospital’s Emergency Department from the scene and rushed Swercewski to the hospital.
He was given emergency care and cardiac monitoring during the ambulance ride. At the hospital, he was taken to the cardiac catheterization lab where it was determined that his heart’s left anterior descending artery was 100 percent blocked.
During the 90 minutes Swercewski spent in the Cath lab, the interventional cardiology team performed a balloon angioplasty to restore blood flow to his artery, then inserted stents (tiny mesh tubes) to prevent the artery from closing again. Following the procedure, his color returned, and he began feeling better.
After a day and a half in the hospital, Swercewski was discharged with orders to follow up with Arslan Johnghar, MD, at Cardiology Associates of Greater Waterbury. After a few weeks of monitoring and some new medication, he is back to saving lives and performing his normal physical activities.
“Being on the receiving end of emergency care was quite an eye opener,” said Swercewski. “I’m grateful to my fellow EMS responders and to the staff at Waterbury Hospital for saving my life.”