A New Shot at Life
Kevin Kamemoto is one of five patients to survive a heart attack
on an unusual weekend.

 
It wasn’t a full moon… it wasn’t a holiday weekend… so what was so different about the first weekend in March? “We received five patients having an active heart attack, three treated in cath labs by cardiologists and two requiring emergent open heart surgery,” says Valarie Fleming, RN, BSN, MBA, Director of Cardiovascular Services at Little Company of Mary Hospital – Torrance. “All of those were patients under the age of 55.”

 
“The unusual part of this was that it all occurred within an 18-hour period,” Fleming says.

According to Fleming, these simultaneous emergencies called for the deployment of multiple cardiac teams. “We have systems in place to bring staff into the hospital for evening or weekend emergencies and our processes came through like clockwork,” Fleming says. “Our teams assembled very quickly to care for the patients and save their lives.”

One of those patients was Kevin Kamemoto. Having just turned 51 years old on Christmas Day, Kamemoto has been re-named “The Miracle Boy” by his family.

Kevin was working that Saturday afternoon, driving a cargo van, when he began feeling chest tightness, dizzy and lightheaded. “I thought I was having a diabetic reaction,” Kevin says. “I drank a bottle of Gatorade like I have before with diabetic reactions and the lightheadedness went away, but the chest pain did not.”

After feeling a little better, he began driving again and as he reached his office, his arm went numb. “It was the classic symptom,” Kevin says. “It started in my shoulder and radiated down my arm. But I did exactly what I shouldn’t have done. I drove home to my parent’s house instead of calling 9-1-1.”   Continue »

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