Jose Antoni, M.D., Corpus Christi ,TX – 40 at time of event (1967)
Dr. Antoni recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of his cardiac arrest and the memory of that day is still fresh. He and a friend were having breakfast one morning prior to going fishing, when he felt nauseous, with a vague pressure in his chest. As he describes it “I was in denial. I was feeling pretty sick. But I was only forty40 years old, and I said ‘This is not going to happen to me’”.
Instead of going out on the boat, Jose went to the hospital. Miraculously, when Jose “dropped dead” he was right next to the only defibrillator in the complex. Immediately the staff realized they needed to use this new device, but it was an orderly who knew how to switch the unit on. He had witnessed the first time it had been used, several days earlier (unfortunately that victim wasn’t saved).
This survival story is so typical—a witnessed event with immediate defibrillation—although the subsequent treatment was not. We now have the benefit of decades of advancement in cardiology, and it seems incredible how little we knew then, and now.
Corpus Christi, originally a frontier town, is now a city of several hundred thousand, and lies on the Gulf of Mexico, about halfway between Houston and the U.S. Mexico border. In 1967, the city had only about 100 doctors, and it is amazing that nearly half of them volunteered to a bedside vigil for 10 days, while Dr. Antoni lay in an oxygen tent in the ICU. This was the only way they could be sure he could survive another arrest! He remained in the hospital for a month, as bed rest was the standard procedure for cardiac patients. He did not receive an ICD*, nor did he undergo surgery. He was given a beta-blocker, called propranolol, and recuperated by lying in bed. When finally discharged in a wheelchair, Dr. Antoni decided to rehabilitate himself. He chose walking, but had to wear an elastic suit in the mornings to maintain his blood pressure. Walking has become part of his life, and every day he still does a three-mile stint.
Unfortunately, the prognosis for cardiac arrest survivors in those days was uncertain. “At that time, I’d never heard of anyone being resuscitated before, so I didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said. Consequently, Jose decided not to tackle anything new; in fact he made no plans at all. After one year he was still alive, and suggested to Martha that they go visit his relatives in France. He told her “I know I’m going to die soon, so let’s go first class.” They sailed on the Queen Elizabeth and spent five weeks touring his father’s birthplace. “It was an emotional trip,” he said. “We came back, and another year went by and I didn’t die. So I said ‘Well you know, I always wanted to go to the Orient. So seeing as I’m going to die, we’d better go now.’” After they went to Hong Kong and Tokyo he saw another year go by without dying. So it was time for a trip to the Caribbean. Suddenly he realized, “If I don’t die soon, we’ll be broke.”
Feeling somewhat experienced in cardiac survival, Dr Antoni started working with the American Heart Association delivering the then new ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) course. He was a pioneer, and delivered the first training in Corpus Christi in 1978. Since then he has helped about 1,000 students earn this certification every year. After traveling to his hometown in the Dominican Republic, Dr Antoni realized he wasn’t satisfied with teaching only an English-language version, and set about translating the course material into Spanish. He published the book himself and proceeded to deliver the same course in nearly every South American country. Only in 2007 did he fully retire and put his feet up—after his morning walk, that is.
When asked about living for so long without an ICD he said, “I’m fairly conservative, and so I think if I could do what I did without an ICD then I was much better off without it.” But, he then went on to qualify that statement, “I have been very lucky, when you look at the times that these things happened.”
“I’m now 82. I had my MI at forty, and I have lived two lives. The second one has been longer, more productive, and more satisfying.” Dr. Antoni said with understandable pride.
* ICDs were not approved by the FDA until 1985.
-Jeremy Whitehead