Heart to Imagine

Looking back to that day in 2004, Tim Giles realizes that the symptoms that he was experiencing were classic-chest pain, cold sweats, pain radiating down his arm. But the then 54-year-old Redondo Beach resident had spent the weekend at the beach and thought maybe he had had too much sun. So at about 3:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon, when he started to feel poorly while sitting at his desk, he went to the kitchen to get some water and an aspirin.

 
“There was no aspirin in the kitchen, so I went back to my office and worked until 4:30 p.m.,” Giles said. “Then, I got in my car and headed home. As I got closer, I knew something was wrong. I considered stopping at a fire station on my usual route, but instead I decided to drive myself to the emergency room at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance. About that same time, my wife, Kim, called me. I told her I was driving myself to the ER because something was wrong with my heart.”

As shocking as the news was, Kim had to remain cool. She was on her way to a school function with their daughter, Melissa, who was 12 at the time, and needed to stay focused to get Melissa situated at a friend’s house and meet Tim at the hospital.

“I had to stay calm,” Kim said. “I was with our daughter and I didn’t want to worry her, but my mind was racing a mile a minute.”

When Giles reached the emergency room, the staff immediately started checking his vital signs and drawing blood; then he was sent for a CT scan. It was there that Giles met his cardiac physician, Michele Del Vicario, MD.

“Dr. Del Vicario wheeled me back to the ER from my CT scan,” Giles said. “He said there were no obvious signs of a heart attack, but he wanted to keep me overnight for observation. He said they’d do a stress test in the morning.”

Somewhat relieved, Kim left to pick up Melissa and take one of the cars home. But by the next morning, the plan had changed.

“During the night, a blood test revealed that his enzyme levels had risen and he began to have an irregular heartbeat,” Kim said. “They decided to do an angiogram instead.”

The angiogram revealed an 80 percent blockage at the beginning of his left anterior decending artery.

“The amount of disease in his artery was very significant,” Dr. Del Vicario said. “Yet when we measured the flow through that artery, it was almost normal. It was peculiar. I had never seen a case exactly like it, and I have not seen one since.”   Continue »

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