Editor Chris Ogryski

Looking back, I should have known that day was coming, because I was living a lifestyle that was destructive to my body. I was working between 70 and 90 hours a week and most nights and evenings I was eating McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell or whatever other kind of fast food or pizza I could shove in my mouth. This was the lifestyle I've been living for most of the last five and a half years that I've worked at the paper and, honestly, for years before that, too (at least as far as my eating habits).

With all the damage I was doing to my body over time, people have asked me whether I saw any signs that this was coming. The answer would be both "yes" and "no." I did feel a little short of breath the week before my attack, but I just thought I was a fat guy, who was getting a little pudgier and maybe needed to lose a few pounds.

I was also a little tired, but it was so hard to tell with the hours I was working. The week prior to the incident, I had been working on our Spring Sports Preview, which included finishing up photo shoots during the final week, processing all the photos, writing all the stories for the schools (and a lot of the information was coming in at the last minute), as well as spending another eight hours or so actually laying the pages out (what we call paginating).

Ironically, I actually took two days off in the middle of the week for a mini-vacation to see the Detroit Tigers play, but all that did was force me to work harder and longer the other five days of the week, as well as the nights on the days I had off. And it was another opportunity for me to shove down three or four Italian sausages with peppers, onions, etc.

Let's just say that I didn't get much sleep that week and to compensate for that, I was pumping myself full of Red Bull, Diet Pepsi and Starbucks coffee to keep me going. I think over the course of the three days prior to my attack, I had seven or eight Red Bulls and who knows how much pop.

So it is no wonder that on that Monday afternoon I felt off. I was extremely stressed, so much of my time over the weekend had been diverted to finishing the special sports section (it is a heckuva lot of work for one person to do on their own) that I still had a bunch of my work to finish for the regular edition of our papers (editing stories, processing pictures and writing all the stuff for the regular sports section).

But that was made more difficult as I noticed an uncomfortable pain in my jaw maybe around two or three o'clock. Now I have a jaw that tends to click or that sometimes feels uncomfortable and I "crack it," but that wasn't offering me any relief. Then the tops of my shoulders were feeling funny, too. They were tingling and I couldn't shake it.

At around four p.m. I couldn't stand it anymore. I know I intended to get out of the office for awhile and take some sports pictures, but my plan also included getting a short nap, which I thought would help. I think it was on the way to my home in Ubly (to get my camera and catch some ZZZZs) that I first felt some chest discomfort.

After not being able to shake that feeling after a few minutes at home, I called my wife, Jill, in tears. After talking with her for a few minutes, the pain temporarily subsided and I thought I'd be okay. However, it came back a few minutes later and I was once again on the phone letting her know I needed to go to the hospital.

We decided to head up 142 to Scheurer Hospital and, on the car ride, I tried to find a comfortable place to sit, where I didn't move too much (it was later explained to me that this pain was angina). It seemed like when I stayed still I was alright... well, at least until the next onset of pain came on stronger and stronger. The chest pain was getting much more intense at this point and lasting longer.

I'm not sure what I was thinking at that point, but I know heart attack hadn't crossed my mind or at least I didn't think I was having one. I guess I figured whatever malfunction was occurring could be corrected with some medicine at the hospital and maybe I'd feel better by the morning or in a few days.

Boy, was I wrong and, boy, was that pain ever getting stronger. We got to the point on our car ride where I needed to decide to go to Huron Medical Center or drive another seven or eight miles to Scheurer. Something told me I needed to be in the hospital as soon as possible, so I told my wife to head to HMC --and I am so lucky we did.

My wife and daughter dropped me off at the door and then I remember picking up a phone to alert the ER staff that I was having chest pains. I was whisked away to a room, where I was quickly given an EKG. The results where positive, I hadn't suffered a heart attack, but there seemed to be something weird at the top of each wave that concerned them.

My memory of what happened at the hospital is a little fuzzy, but I do remember getting some medicine, probably an IV, all while some worker was trying to get my insurance information. While that may elicit a collective "huh" from the readers, I want to point out that I received nothing but top-notch care at HMC.

It was sometime later when my wife and maybe my daughter, Kylie, were in the room, I started to feel dizzy. I told her to go get someone and she did. At that point I started having what looked like a seizure, but was in reality a heart attack or at least that is what I have been told. I don't remember anything from the point right before I passed out until the next morning.

Somehow Jill and Kylie were in the waiting room and as I have heard Jill tell the story, she was there when she heard the call "Code Blue." She didn't realize it at the time, but it was for me. It was soon after that someone came out to tell her things were very serious and she probably needed to call someone.

While Jill was pulling herself together and calling her mom, the HMC staff was trying to bring me back from the dead. As I've been told, once I went into arrest I was shocked seven times before they brought me back. Seven times!

That is very hard for me to deal with, especially every time I take off my shirt and still see the marks from where they shocked me two weeks after the fact. Had they given up after five shocks or six, you might be reading a look back at my life in this issue, instead of how I barely survived death.

From the point my wife was informed of how my condition was degrading, I (think I) was stabilized (I know my guarding angel, Julie Hund, was bagging me right until I got on the helicopter, so would that mean I was stable or not), St. Mary's Hospital was contacted and flight care was on the way to come get me. I've heard my wife describe how strange it was to see me bundled up "in a bag" for transport, but I haven't really pushed her to find out more details.

I think my father-in-law put it best when he said that I was probably lucky not to know all the details and that my mind was likely protecting me. Maybe that is why I'm trying to keep some of the details as foggy as possible. Recovering and changing my life is going to be pretty hard, I think knowing too many of the little details would bog me down and make me sadder than I already am about what happened.

I do know that I have been moved to tears on several occasions as I have heard the stories about when my family and loved ones found out about the news. From my wife having to call her parents and tell them what happened, to my mother-in-law calling my best friend, Paul Adams, and hearing about how he broke down upon hearing the news. Then there were my parents and my sister who rushed from Sterling Heights and spent several days in Saginaw, Heidi Sweeney who raced to the hospital to pick up Kylie and kept her overnight and took care of her, and my brother-in-law, Dan (Jill's brother), and his family, who made the trip from Canton just to be there and got there in what seemed to be record time.

I would also be remiss if I didn't talk about the staff at St. Mary's, who responded quickly and helped get me on the road to recovery. They took me into surgery, inserted a stent in one of my arteries and got my blood flowing like it should have been quickly enough that no real permanent damage was done to my heart.

They also did there best to keep me from getting too feisty on my first night in the hospital. Perhaps it is because I like to flop from side to side when I sleep or something like that, but apparently throughout the night I was thrashing around and might have even tried to take my tube out (thankfully years of watching ER taught me about breathing tube etiquette when I was awake, but that is part of next week's story). So they put me in restraints and drugged me up until I was fast asleep.

The next morning, I finally woke up and the first thing I remember was seeing Jill's smiling face and a true look of relief. I don't know what heaven looks like; I didn't see any images of it in the four or five minutes when I was dead or anytime throughout the night, but I can't imagine it is any more beautiful than the sight I woke up to that morning.

All I know as the fog in my head started to clear, I realized that I had a tube down my throat and as I looked around the room to get my bearings, I saw a sign that indicated this was a room at St. Mary's Hospital in Saginaw.

So I wasn't in Bad Axe? I was pretty confused. So I indicated I wanted a pen and I wrote the words "What happened?"

Come back next week, as I talk more about what happened during my week in the hospital, as well as explain more about the procedure I underwent, including pictures of what my blocked artery looked like before and after the stent was placed in.
In the meantime, I implore you all to take a long, hard look at your life and your own health. If my heart attack proved anything, it is that "it can't happen to me" is just an excuse to prevent us from taking a look at the lifestyles we are living and the changes we need to make to live a long, healthy life.
It is my hope in writing this series that at least one person, but hopefully more, will make those positive changes in their life and avoid some of the things that happened .