Wallingford Town Councilor Hospitalized After ‘Attack’ On Heart

WALLINGFORD, CT — Wallingford Town Councilor Jason Zandri has been hospitalized with what he called a “critical viral attack” on his heart.

Zandri described the attack as his body’s viral infection defense mechanism tricking the antibodies to “say ‘the heart is the virus - go kill it.’”

“The heart enlarges in the chest cavity as its defense to the attack but it must still beat to work but that muscle to supply fresh oxygenated blood to the body's organs,” Zandri wrote in a post on Facebook.

Zandri said the incident happened at 10 p.m. on July 28, which was the same day he received paperwork to petition his way onto the ballot for this November’s election. Zandri, a Democratic incumbent who is in his fourth term on the council, resigned from the Democratic Town Committee in June and didn’t seek the party’s endorsement. He planned to petition his way onto the ballot in his bid for re-election.

Zandri was unconscious for eight days after the attack on his heart and said the incident will likely end his candidacy because he will miss the deadline to secure the needed signatures, the Record-Journal reported.

Of the incident, Zandri wrote that his son Andrew called 911 and likely saved his life.

“Andrew called 911 for me and by the time the ambulance arrived the symptoms I described sounded like a blockage,” Zandri wrote. “The action of injecting dye to try to identify a blockage effectively crashed my heart rate - it went from working at 100% to only outputting 30% of capacity - so my body was about to lose.

“There was no more room to expand and even beat.”

Zandri said the professionals at Hartford Healthcare, with about 60 seconds to spare, got him hooked up to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine and a ventilator and began to discuss options “from heart transplant (if one was even available) to possibly ‘calling it’ if my heart couldn't rest and recover and my body's antibodies couldn't ‘reprogram’ themselves to attack the viral infection and not its own heart the viral infection would win.”

“While on the ECMO and the ventilator my antibodies did just that - while the heart muscle wasn't really beating because the ECMO was doing that role, my antibodies reprogrammed and turned on the actual viral infection,” Zandri wrote. “My body could now fight the real infection. The Professionals at Hartford Healthcare had me critically stable but if the viral infection got the upper hand again it would be game over.”

Zandri said the ECMO ran for five days straight to allow his antibodies to beat down the actual viral infection.

“On that 5th day, the doctor's felt the heart could beat at 100% capacity and oxygenated blood correctly and they pulled me off the ECMO,” he said.

Zandri said the ventilator had to keep working for three more days and on the final eighth day they weened him off so his “real lungs could go back to their jobs.”

“But there are HUGE risks being under that long and a body that can't be moved or move on its own,” he wrote. “When they wake you - 52 year old man with high blood pressure and A1C Numbers at boarding at maximum how long will it take to get organs and muscles to 95%? How will the brain begin to work again and how?

“Usually it is measured in "months"...”

“I am happy to report that not only am I just on the edge of being stepped out to the next acute care level down for occupational, physical, and cognitive therapy (possibly Friday)....

“The Doctor said I could shave.”

Zandri also said he could have a setback or “top out sooner on one or more levels... but I wouldn't count on it. The Doctor said ‘I've seen people claw back like this... guys like you Jason... you'll fight and win.’”