Horse Trainer Survives Heart Attack at Fair
Youngstown, OH (PRWEB) September 22, 2014 -- Shake Danny Trent’s hand and you know immediately that he’s a working man, a hard-working man. His hands are worn, rough with callouses that come from 50 years training horses.
His face lights up when he talks about the horses he’s trained, especially Haha, the 3-year-old racing colt who won race #6 on Saturday, Aug. 30, at the Canfield Fair.
Haha also won at tracks in Columbus and Wellington, Ohio, but it’s Danny who may be the biggest winner. He survived what many people don’t – a heart attack that rendered him unconscious moments after settling Haha into his stall at the fair.
Danny, a resident of Delaware, Ohio, went to fill a bucket of water for his horse and doesn’t remember what happened next. What he does know is that if it weren’t for a team of healthcare providers who worked together seamlessly, he wouldn’t be around to talk about it.
He suffered a massive heart attack just outside the speed barn at the fair early Saturday morning and collapsed.
“I been short of breath every once in a while, but I’d just sit down,” he says, explaining that he didn’t know he had a heart condition. “I don’t go to doctors,” he explains.
Two security guards saw him go down and rushed to help. They called for paramedics and started CPR. When the paramedics arrived two minutes later – three paramedic teams are stationed onsite during the Canfield Fair – Danny had no pulse, no respiration. They shocked him twice with an automated external defibrillator to jumpstart his heart, started an IV and performed a 12-lead EKG.
The EKG transmitted critical information about Danny’s condition to doctors in the emergency room at St. Elizabeth Health Center, speeding his diagnosis so treatment could begin as soon as he arrived.
When the ambulance arrived at St. E’s, Danny was immediately taken to the cardiac cath lab where Dr. Wahoub Hout, a cardiologist/interventionalist, and the CVL team performed a cardiac catheterization that determined he needed heart bypass surgery. Danny had blockages in three of the major arteries leading to his heart.
The following morning – Sunday – Dr. Jeffrey Fulton, a cardiothoracic surgeon at St. E’s, performed a triple coronary artery bypass on Danny’s heart.
“I was afraid, but I knew I had to have it. I wasn’t going to walk out alive if I didn’t,” Danny says. Then, his voice rising and eyes opening wide, Danny adds, “These are one heck of doctors here on this hospital staff – they brought me back alive. Not too many people survive what I went through.”
Danny was released from St. Elizabeth Health center the Saturday after his surgery with plans to rest. “I can visit my horse, I just can’t do no work,” he smiled, grateful to be alive.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Danny Trent holds a teddy bear that all open-heart surgery patients receive. Patients hold the bear against their chests to help with pain.
About Humility of Mary Health Partners
Humility of Mary Health Partners is an integrated health system in the Mahoning Valley, which encompasses the Youngstown/Warren metropolitan area – Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties in Ohio. It is a key market of Mercy Health (formerly Catholic Health Partners) in Cincinnati, the largest health system in Ohio and one of the largest Catholic health systems in the United States. HMHP provides a full spectrum of health care services – acute inpatient and trauma, outpatient and ambulatory, rehabilitation, behavioral, emergency and urgent care, primary care physicians in Patient-Centered Medical Homes, specialist physician care, home health, home medical equipment, long-term care and hospice care, as well as the HMHP Foundation. Major sites are St. Elizabeth Health Center, St. Joseph Health Center, St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center, HMHP Physician Associates, HMHP Care Network, The Joanie Abdu Comprehensive Breast Care Center, HMHP Cancer Care Centers in Warren and Boardman, Howland Surgery Center, St. Elizabeth Austintown Emergency Care, St. Joseph Andover Emergency Care, HM Home Health Services, HM Durable Medical Equipment, HM Home Pharmacy Services, The Assumption Village, Humility House and Hospice of the Valley. Learn more at http://www.HMpartners.org.
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Maraline Kubik, Humility of Mary Health Partners, http://HMpartners.org, +1 (330) 480-2258, [email protected]
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