Ironwood man says he’s quit smoking after helicopter ride to Duluth hospital
Kelly Peissig is through with the Liggetts cigarettes, that’s for sure.
After having a heart attack at his deer camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in November, Peissig was transported to St. Mary’s Medical Center by LifeFlight air ambulance.
Peissig’s brief time with the LifeFlight helicopter crew — about 40 minutes from Ironwood’s Grand View Hospital to Duluth — was chronicled on Page A1 of the Nov. 30 News Tribune. The fact that Peissig’s doctor in Ironwood felt he needed the quick transport was an indication of how serious his heart condition was.
SMDC Health System paramedic Steve Morley (center) prepares to help heart attack patient Kelly Peissig on a gurney so he can be transported by air ambulance from Grand View Hospital in Ironwood, Mich., to Duluth. (Janna Goerdt / jgoerdt@duluthnews.com)
Peissig said he had no previous symptoms and was on no medication before his air ambulance ride, one of nearly 9,000 requests LifeFlight has met since it began operations in 1989. A growing number of those requests are for heart attack patients like Peissig, who, according to SMDC cardiologist
Dr. Mark Neustel, often can avoid extensive heart damage if they can get to a major medical center quickly for treatment.
The LifeFlight crew rapidly wheeled Peissig to one of the hospital’s catheterization laboratories, where physicians performed an angiogram to locate his blocked arteries.
While all this was going on, Peissig’s brother, Leon Smetak, was driving the 2½ hours from Ironwood to Duluth, generally following the route LifeFlight had taken.
Earlier that day Peissig had taken three of his brother’s nitroglycerin pills; Smetak had suffered a heart attack in 2006, and he recognized the signs in his younger brother. Smetak had been treated with tiny stents that propped open his blocked arteries, and that’s what Peissig had in mind.
“I was hoping they could just slam a couple stents in there,” Peissig said. Instead, doctors opted for open-heart surgery, and Peissig underwent a quadruple bypass days after he arrived at St. Mary’s.
That left Peissig with a scar down the middle of his chest — his only scar — and orders to lay off the cigarettes.
Smetak drove his brother home on Nov. 24, and Peissig has been resting at home in Land O’Lakes, Wis. He’s quit smoking Liggetts after nurturing the habit for more than 30 years. That’s been hard, Peissig said.
“I keep loading accolades on him, telling him how proud I am,” Smetak said. He had to quit smoking after his own heart attack.
Peissig returns to Duluth for a checkup on Thursday, and he might be able to return to work as a caretaker after that.
“I’m a lucky guy, I guess,” he said.
Source: http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/79943/
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