“These people changed my life.”

“I kept thinking to myself, why the hell am I here?”

To Paul Goldberg, the first few months of cardiac rehabilitation felt almost worse than the severe heart attack he had recently survived. 

The 50-year-old man was the father of two lively young daughters. He owned a successful construction business. And tended goal in an amateur hockey league. 

Having to suddenly attend group therapy with 70- and 80-year-olds made him feel completely out of place. 

“I was by far the youngest person in the room. I thought I didn’t belong,” he remembers. 

But ever since his heart attack , Paul couldn’t walk around the block without stopping and wheezing. Every bit of effort made him feel like he was going to collapse. 

“I was debilitated,” he says.

Paul eventually found out that a big part of his physical burden came from his medication. Beta-blockers are often used to slow down the cardiac rate of people who have had a heart attack. But Paul’s meds worked too well. They lowered his heart rate so much, his body wasn’t getting enough oxygen. In turn, this also seriously affected his mood.

“There were a few times throughout that process where I was somewhat suicidal, to be perfectly honest. I was in such a state of depression because of the meds and because of where I was.” 

Paul was readmitted to the hospital a few times before doctors got his prescription right. “They realized that I’m part of the 1% of people who don't react well to this particular type of beta-blocker,” he explains, hoping that future research can help prevent these situations well before they happen.

“Once they fixed my meds, it was like a switch went off. I felt a drastic improvement.” 
 
His body was finally feeling better. But getting back to his normal state of mind would prove to be a lot more complicated than flipping a switch.

“It was about 10 PM and I was watching the Blue Jays lose against the Yankees,” he recounts. “I was ready for sleep, got up to brush my teeth and all of a sudden, it felt like someone was sticking a knife in my chest.”

A few months earlier Paul had seen his family doctor after feeling particularly out of breath while playing sports. He underwent a stress test, but everything came back normal. 

“I arrogantly dismissed the fact that there was heart disease on one side of my family. I wasn't smoking. I wasn't drinking. I was athletic. So, I wasn’t anticipating a 100% blockage of my main artery.” 

Things started to change about seven weeks into Paul’s cardiac rehab program. A social worker came in and split the room into small groups of people. “I had heard about this because a friend of mine had had a heart attack at the same age. And that’s when he quit.” Things were about to get a lot more sensitive because survivors had to open up to one another.

Paul went on with it. 

He agreed to share his personal life and the stresses he had been through. “And at some point, throughout the process, I realized that I had met some pretty spectacular people,” he says, voice cracking with emotion. 

“There I was, at 50 years old, whining and bitching about how I felt, when the guy sitting across from me was 75 and washing dishes at a restaurant to support his family even though he had just survived heart disease. Opening my mind to what other people were going through helped me accept where I was.” 

Three years after his heart attack, Paul has finally figured out why he stuck with cardiac rehab in the first place. “These events taught me how to become a better father. I like to be in control, I juggle a lot of things, but I learned to be calmer. I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore. It's motivated me to enjoy my life.”

And beat heart disease.

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