Construction worker has heart attack at perfect jobsite

ST PAUL, Minn. — When you work construction, your jobsite changes regularly.

“All over the place,” the Krause-Anderson laborer says.

Don helped build the hotel at the Minnesota Vikings practice facility and the new residential tower overlooking Target Field.

But five days before Christmas, fate put Don and his hard hat in the perfect place.

“He just said he didn’t feel right,” Andrew Gustafson, Don’s co-worker, says.

Don and Andrew were taking down temporary walls at the time.

Their jobsite: Regions Hospital.

“We were just starting to take the walls down and that’s when, first, my elbow started bothering me,” Don says. “My whole arm started getting numb, and then I had the chest pain.”

Concerned, Andrew queried his co-worker. 

“He said, ‘You don’t look so good. Do you feel alright?’” Don recalls.

“I was thinking stroke,” Andrew says.

From a lounge, Andrew grabbed a chair which he parked along a wall in a hospital hallway.

“I was sitting there,” Don says.

“I was sitting at the charge desk,” Jodi Shewczyk says. “I stood up and walked to the supply room and there they were.”

Jodi has a nurse’s intuition, mostly because she is one.

“He didn’t look good,” she says. “He wouldn’t tell me he was having chest pains; he was talking about his elbow.”

Jodi didn’t wait around for further explanation.

“She said, ‘Well, we don’t mess around with that,’” Don recalls.

Jodi snagged a wheelchair from down the hall.

“She moves pretty fast,” Don says with a laugh.

“I’m a fast walker normally,” Jody confirms. “That’s one thing people joke about is I walk very fast.”

Walking fast – pushing Don in the wheelchair – Jodi went straight to the Regions Hospital emergency department, where Dr. Graci Gorman took over.

“When I got the EKG, initially, I knew it’s a very classic pattern for a heart attack,” the emergency department physician says.

“That’s the before picture,” Don says holding up the EKG. 

The image in his hand shows blood flow cut off in his artery.

“That’s where it was blocked,” Don says, pointing to the location of a 100 percent blockage. 

He nervously laughs. “It’s like, wow, I guess I really did have something going on in there.”

Within minutes, Don was in the catheterization lab receiving two stents.

A week-and-a-half later, he was back at Regions Hospital – working.

“Everything with a heart attack is timing, so the sooner you can evaluate, the sooner we can get to a procedure to start saving that heart muscle,” Dr. Gorman says. “Typically, people can take weeks to months to recover from a heart attack, so for him to get back on his feet in 10 days is remarkable.”

Don could have been at a different job site.

Worse, he could have been at home – where he lives alone.

“So, he was extremely fortunate to be here when this all happened,” Dr. Gorman says.

Don and Jodi have become fast friends. They exchanged a brief embrace upon meeting in the hospital hallway recently.

Don has taken to calling Jodi his second favorite nurse.

“My daughter’s a nurse and I’m very proud of her,” Don says, his voice cracking with emotion.

Janie Peabody, a nurse at the St. Cloud hospital, needs her dad around.

“She’s getting married in January – next January – so I want to be there,” Don says softly.

Don and Andrew twist out the screws holding another section of temporary wall in place in the Region’s Hospital burn unit.

Two months have passed since Don’s heart attack.   

“It’s pretty etched, etched in my mind,” he says.

When you work construction, you don’t forget a project.

Especially the one that saved your life.

“I guess I saved all the luck of my life for that day,” Don says.

Boyd Huppert is always looking for great stories to share in the Land of 10,000 Stories! Send us your suggestions by filling out this form.

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