Page 15 - KootenaiHealth

“I remember Jan getting up from the table to go downstairs,” Philip said. “I was still sitting in my chair, and she said I told her I thought I was having a heart attack.” Because of a history of heart prob-lems, Philip was familiar with the symptoms of a heart attack, such as nausea, sweating and chest pain. “none of the usual symptoms showed in my case,” he said. “This thing was really a total surprise. not only were there no symptoms, but it was totally painless. It was almost like I just fell asleep.”

f a s t h e l p

Jan immediately called emergency services and was instructed to be-gin cPR. luckily, two offcers were close by and could take over until the ambulance arrived.

“The next thing I remember, I was waking up and asking the nurses why I was in the hospital,” Philip said. “I don’t recall any of the incident or treatment process frst-hand.”

Philipwas put into a hypothermia-induced coma for treatment. Because it’s common for patients to have a sei-zure during this process, he was on a continuous electroencephalogram (eeG) to monitor his brain function. “Before hospitals started using the continuous eeG, it was impos-sible to tell if a patient was having seizures while in a coma,” said Judy Hayton, electroneurodiagnostic co-ordinator. “It used to be that an eeG was performed every two to three days for 30 to 40 minutes. In between that time a patient could be having seizures, and nobody would know.” Statistics show that 15 to 18 percent of patients die after having seizures

c o n s t a n t Wa t c h f u l n e s s

nowKootenai, along with other hos-pitals around the country, performs continuous eeGmonitoring. Along with this treatment, eeG technicians, such as Hayton, are able to receive notifcations about their patients. If their patient begins to have a seizure, they get updates sent to their mobile phone within 10 seconds.

When Philip began having a sei-zure on his second day of treatment, Hayton was able to contact his neu-rologist and physician immediately. “His status changed literally within minutes of receiving care

for his seizure, and everything was back to normal,” she said. “overall his treatment process couldn’t have gone better.” Jan agrees.

“It’s so great that we have so many highly skilled people work-ing in such a small community,” she said.

Philip recalls going through outpa-tient rehab to build back his strength after being treated.

“I had really intense discomfort in my chest,” he said. “But the staff members at Kootenai were absolutely unbelievable with their degree of assistance, care and comfort. I was in a lot of pain, but they made it bear-able. I can’t say enough about how well we were treated.”