Fort Knox, Kentucky — John Campbell insisted he was fine. His friend didn’t buy it.

The former community relations officer for the Fort Knox Public Affairs Department briefly visited local hangouts before deciding it was time to go home on Dec. 20, 2023.

“A friend of mine saw me wandering around and said, ‘Hey, I can’t give you a ride home.'” Campbell eventually relented and asked a friend to give him a ride home. received.

The next morning, Campbell planned to have breakfast with one of her twin daughters at a restaurant near Brandenburg. When he didn’t show up 10 minutes before her meeting time, she realized something was wrong and called her father.

“Apparently, when he came into the house the night before, it fell into the Christmas tree, which is right by the bedroom door,” Campbell said. “I got up and went to bed, and the next morning her daughter called me and said she couldn’t find her keys, so her daughter came to get them.”

When Campbell saw him, she said she suggested he go to the hospital. It was later determined that Campbell had suffered a stroke.

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Heart Association. In 2020 alone, the disease claimed 928,741 lives, accounting for 41.2% of all deaths.

Stroke ranks fifth on this list at 17.3%, accounting for 162,890 deaths in the United States. Statistics show that women are more likely to suffer a stroke than men. And stroke affects men and women very differently.

Campbell said she didn’t feel any symptoms until the night of Dec. 20.

Even after falling into the Christmas tree and losing his keys under it, he didn’t realize anything was wrong. It wasn’t until his daughter saw him the next day and called her mother, his nurse, urging him to go to the hospital that Campbell realized something was seriously wrong.

“My face started to sag very quickly,” Campbell said. “I couldn’t drink soda because my lips drooped.”

Campbell ended up in intensive care for about three days and then had to undergo therapy to regain his speech. He said he was able to get everything back in a short period of time and felt better after his stroke than he did before his onset.

In 2015, RJ Dyrdek faced another aspect of heart disease: a heart attack.

The energy program manager at the Directorate General of Public Works was 55 years old and had excellent blood pressure and cholesterol values. He never smoked, visited the Army Wellness Center regularly, did weight training faithfully, and did not take drugs for long periods of time. “I don’t like side effects.”

But on August 4, everything changed.

Dyrdek remembered that it was a Friday. He had finished his work and went to the gym “as usual”.

“Before I could really get started, I felt a small, very sharp pain in the center of my chest,” Dyrdek said. “I felt a stabbing sensation in the middle of my chest, about the size of a knife blade.”

The pain forced him to stop training and sit out for a while. He kept pressing hard on the area with his finger for about 15 minutes and suddenly the pain stopped.

“I called my wife and told her I was going to be home earlier than usual because I was going to take the rest of my training off,” he said. “She was totally worried. She had never done anything like that before, so she cut her training short.”

Dyrdek said he thought it was just heartburn and told his wife about it when he got home. The problem is that he has never had heartburn and prefers spicy food on a regular basis. So he took an antacid and was able to relax into the evening without any problems.

But the next day, that sharp pain returned three times, and again on Sunday before going to church. Increasing your dose of antacid tablets can further reduce the pain.

Until Monday morning.

As Dyrdek was buttoning his dress shirt and tying his tie for his big day at the office, the pain returned along with something else.

“This time, my wife said I was white as a ghost, and I was sweating through that dress shirt as if I had been in the gym for hours,” Dyrdek said. “I’m soaking wet.”

An analysis of Cedars-Sinai data from 2022 found that deaths from heart attacks have increased since COVID-19. It also increases across all age groups, most significantly among those aged 25 to 44.

In a 10-year study by the CDC from April 1, 2012 to March 30, 2022, researchers attributed 1,522,699 deaths to heart attacks.

By the time Dyrdek arrived at the Elizabethtown clinic late Monday morning, he had suffered six heart attacks, the last one while he was sitting in a physician assistant’s office. When they connected Dyrdek to an electrocardiogram to check his heart, his eyes got big and they immediately called an ambulance.

But even after medical personnel took him to the emergency room in a wheelchair, Dyrdek continued to insist he needed more antacid tablets.

Both men now admit that they are incredibly lucky statistically. They both could have died instantly. Both of them are doing well today and are grateful to be alive. Both now offer sober advice to others.

“Don’t be stubborn when people are pointing out the obvious,” Campbell says. “I was hard-headed. I was like, ‘Leave me alone.’ Everything is fine. ‘Well, everything went wrong. ”

Dyrdek has a slightly different perspective.

“Don’t assume you’re OK just because your overall cholesterol levels are good. If the ratio of good to bad cholesterol doesn’t match, it’s not a problem,” says Dyrdek. “I was in great shape. Thursday night I ran six miles. Friday night I had a heart attack.

“A heart attack can happen to anyone at any time. Check it out – take it seriously.”