One typical Sunday afternoon, the Perilloux family was watching a movie. Out of nowhere Brannon Perilloux, M.D., father and husband, started feeling chest pains.

 

Although Dr. Perilloux felt his chest pains were an emergency, the thought of a heart attack at 40 years old never crossed Amy, Brannon's wife and pediatric cardiology tech’s, mind.

 

“I thought we would be finished at the hospital and make it back for our golf tee time 45 minutes later,” his wife Alicia Perilloux recalled.

 

As the family pulled out of the subdivision, Dr. Perilloux called the Lane Regional Medical Center ER and told them his symptoms.

 

“They were waiting outside the door for me with a chair and the machine,” he said.

 

Dr. Perilloux started taking off his shirt and drying his chest in preparation for the EKG leads. As the machine read his heart rhythms, he watched the paper print out the diagnosis “Acute Myocardial Infarction.”

 

The ER physician looked at him and said, “You’re having a heart attack.”

 

Seven minutes

Seven minutes after the Perilloux family reached the ER, Dr. Perilloux lost consciousness.

 

“The sooner you get to the emergency room, the better. If we had waited eight minutes, we would have had a different scenario,” Dr. Perilloux said.  

 

Before the doctors took him into another room, his family was by his side.

 

“He told the boys he loved them as the doctors were moving him on the stretcher. Then he looked at me and said, ‘I’m not ready to go.’ At that moment, his eyes rolled back in his head,” Alicia said.

 

The ER medical staff started CPR on Dr. Perilloux immediately and prepared for defibrillation. After two shocks, his heart was back into a normal rhythm and he was ready to be moved to the catheterization lab.

 

Clay Hammett, M.D. of the Cardiovascular Institute of the South, successfully put in a heart stent to prop open Dr. Perilloux’s left anterior artery (LAD), which had 99 percent blockage.

 

“They literally did everything within 50 minutes and he has no damage to his heart. I’m telling you they were awesome at Lane,” Alicia said.

 

Accepting a helping hand

Dr. Perilloux’s heart recovery period from the heart attack was relatively short. But he sustained orthopedic injuries during CPR that severely limited his movement.

 

He had a broken shoulder, fractured sternum, fractured rib and three fractured vertebrae from the force of CPR and shocking.

 

But Dr. Perilloux is almost thankful for the injuries.

 

“If CPR is done right, you will break something,” he said.

 

During the six-week recovery period, he struggled with sleeping, breathing, coughing and sneezing. Even the smallest, everyday tasks were challenging.

 

He said the family couldn’t have survived without support from friends and family. They were brought food every night, and others just stopped by to show support.

 

Alicia said one of the most difficult parts of the whole experience was accepting help from others. She said her generation usually tries to work things out independently, and then call others for help.

 

“This is our first experience like this and people offered us so much. Just being there is enough,“ she said.

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