Hospital Employee Having Heart Attack Saved By Her Colleagues

RIVERHEAD, NY — In a dramatic story that could have ended very differently, a longtime Peconic Bay Medical Center employee was saved by her friends and colleagues as she suffered a life-threatenign heart attack.

According to PBMC, when the hospital opened the doors of its cardiac catheterization laboratory in October, 2017, Doreen Cooper, who has worked in the billing department since 2007, told her husband, “If you ever have a heart attack, we’ll be able to take care of you right here in Riverhead."

Her husband had had two stents put in at Southside Hospital just a few years earlier.

In a life-altering twist, Cooper had been correct — but it was her own life that was saved.

This year, in February, Cooper thought, at first, that she was having a worse-than-usual episode of acid reflux; she was experiencing nausea and had broken out in a cold sweat, the hospital said.

“You need to take me to the ER,” Cooper told her husband; the couple lives in Aquebogue, just a few minutes from the hospital.

But then she began feeling a constriction in her chest and it was becoming hard to breathe.“You have to call 911,” she said. “I am not going to die today.”

A crew from the Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps rushed her to PBMC’s emergency department and a preliminary assessment determined that Cooper was having a heart attack.The ambulance crew alerted the hospital’s emergency staff that they were on the way.

“I work there,” Cooper said she thought at the time. “I know those people. Everything will be all right.”

Later, at PBMC’s cardiac catheterization suite, cardiologist Dr. Andrew Persits threaded a catheter through Cooper's circulatory system and found a 95% blockage in the anterior branch of her left coronary artery, often known as the “widow-maker” artery; the procedure took about 20 minutes, PBMC said.

“There are no words to describe how different I felt afterward,” Cooper said. “The pressure and pain were gone. My color came back. Within an hour from when the episode started at home to when I was sitting up in the recovery room, I felt amazing.”

As a billing manager at PBMC, Cooper said she pays a lot of attention to how staff members interact with patients, because she believes that providing a sense of caring and compassionate personal attention helps the healing process. But being on the receiving end of that kind of care was deeply moving and life-changing, she said.

“The care and everyone who delivered it were amazing,” Cooper said. “It was like being taken care of as part of a family. The cardiologists, Dr. Persits, and Dr. Stanley Katz, who followed up with me afterward — they really cared and took the time to explain everything to me. The ED, cardiac and ICU staff were all so wonderful. They could tell when I was nervous and when to make me laugh. They knew just what to say to reassure me.”

A month after her STEMI heart attack, Cooper returned to work, explaining that she felt great and was grateful for the care she received; she is following up with cardiac rehab at the hospital.

“It has given me a greater appreciation for the care and dedication of the people I work with,” Cooper said. “We really are a big, caring family. And I want to include the Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance people in that, too. They were absolutely wonderful.”

Opened in October, 2017 the interventional cardiac catheterization suite at PBMC’s Kanas Regional Heart Center has performed more than 1,400 catheterization procedures.

“We are proud and grateful to have been able to bring this life-saving technology to the people we serve,” said Andrew Mitchell, president and CEO of PBMC. “Before we opened our cath lab, East End residents had to travel farther for advanced cardiac services than anywhere else in the region. Considering that heart ailments require quick diagnosis and treatment, this facility has quite literally been a life-saver."

Next year, a second cath lab suite will be opened when the Kanas Regional Heart Center’s facilities are relocated to PBMC’s new critical care tower, which is nearing completion; the tower will also house an expanded emergency department, Peconic Bay Medical Center’s Level III trauma center, and a rooftop helipad, to provide a new standard of emergency response capabilities for East End residents, PBMC said.