As a 23-year-old biomedical engineer, hospital visits were an everyday affair for Shubham, who would install, service and repair medical equipment. But for a man who knew what each reading meant, he couldn’t read his own future. And as a regular at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital (RML), he never imagined he would get a second lease of life there. Having survived a series of heart attacks, Shubham is back at work. And the young man who literally lived on dhaba food and stayed up nights playing PUBG, now sleeps by 10.30 pm, wakes up early and matches his meals and activities with nature’s rhythm. Medicine and a quick surgery saved his life but the heart attack forever changed the way he lived it.

The heart attack that took him by surprise

A resident of Rohini, Shubham had no medical condition. In fact, conscious of his flab, he had begun eating light for some days before his heart attack, hoping to look good at a family event. In fact, he had only salads the night before he fell ill. He woke up with excruciating pain on the morning of August 24, 2021. “I woke up at around 6.30 am with a sharp pain in the middle of my chest. I thought it could be because I had slept in one posture the whole night and that it would fade away,” says Shubham.

The pain was minor at that point of time but he told his parents about it. “It was a minor pain to begin with. But when I went to the washroom to freshen up, it became intense and within 5-10 seconds, it turned into this sharp, electric pulse that was coursing through my body,” he recalls. He began sweating and feeling dizzy. “I had water, felt a little better and as soon as I came out to share this condition with my parents, I fainted,” says Shubham. His mother later told him how, unknown to him, his body had stiffened. “When I regained consciousness about five minutes later, I vomitted. My parents were anxious and my brain was not working. We then called our family doctor who said it was a heart attack and that I should get an ECG done,” he adds.

He went to a family hospital nearby and by 9 am got the ECG done. “As biomedical engineers, we focus on advances in technology and medicine to develop new devices and equipment for improving human health. So I knew how to read the ECG and I could see that the attack was strong. However, I was stable enough to understand the whole situation and was able to move around,” Shubham says.

The hospital staff told Shubham’s father that they did not have cardio machines and other equipment to tackle the situation and, therefore, he needed to be taken to some other facility. “We then went to Maharaja Agrasen Hospital in Sector 22, Rohini. They gave me some medication to improve my blood circulation and thin out my blood clots. I started urinating continuously and the staff made me lie down on the bed for an hour,” he adds.

Shubham and his family then decided to go to Ram Manohar Lohia hospital after his father called up an employee, who happened to be the father of one of Shubham’s friends.

The stent implantation and normalising the heartbeat

It was only when Dr Tarun Kumar, Professor of Cardiology at ABVIMS and Dr RML Hospital, described the plaques that had deposited in Shubham’s arteries that he realised he had suffered a major heart attack.

“Plaque is made up of cholesterol deposits and its build-up causes the inside walls of the heart arteries to narrow over time. This process is called atherosclerosis. So, to remove the plaques, Shubham needed immediate surgery,” says Dr Kumar.

The ordeal didn’t end there. As soon as Shubham lay down on the surgery table, he suffered another heart attack at 11 am and fainted again. “Dr Tarun told me that at that moment my heartbeat had increased. The normal range is 80-100 a minute but mine had become 230. Doctors implanted a stent in my heart,” he adds.

A coronary artery stent is a small, metal mesh tube that expands inside a coronary artery, widening it and prying open blockages. A drug-eluting stent has medicine embedded in it that helps prevent the artery from closing in the long term. After the procedure, which went on almost for two hours, he was shifted to the CCU, where he regained consciousness.

“The good thing is that everything happened very quickly and my surgery also happened very fast and smoothly. It was my good luck that I knew some of the staff from before as I had worked at RML, installing and repairing various equipment,” says Shubham.

With medication free at RML, the family had to pay up Rs 70,000 for the treatment, including the stent.

After being shifted to CCU, Shubham felt fine for a while but by 9 pm, he started feeling uneasy and his heart beats started increasing again.

“I don’t know exactly but there are chances of another heart attack post stent implantation. That’s why doctors recommend that the patient remain in hospital for a couple of days after the surgery. They tried to control the heartbeat but when things didn’t work out, they injected some medicines into me. When this too did not work, they used defibrillators to normalise the heart beat,” he tells us. Defibrillators are devices that send an electric pulse or shock to the heart to restore a normal heartbeat. They are used to prevent or correct an arrhythmia, an uneven heartbeat that is too slow or too fast. If the heart suddenly stops, defibrillators can also help it beat again.

“The shocks were very hurtful. I cried out loud because of the pain and this affected other patients too. I was given four shocks while I was conscious and then anaesthetized. More electric impulses were given while I was under anaesthesia,” says Shubham.

What were the triggers? Smoking, unhealthy diet and lifestyle

His earlier job as a travelling salesman meant that he had to do a lot of field work. “In a month, I would eat outside food for at least 20-25 days. Most of it was junk food that was high on butter and oils. There is no restaurant and dhaba left in Delhi which I have not visited. I picked up smoking and during the Covid-induced confinement at home, I would often sleep very late, eat late and play PUBG. I was addicted to it. My work had reduced as most of it was on-site and I was being careful about setting a frenetic pace. I was not doing much and would go to work only for 10 days,” says Shubham.

Given to self-diagnosis because of his clinical knowledge, Shubham thinks that his cardiac condition could have developed because of a COVID-19 infection he picked up last May. “During Covid, I also took homeopathic drugs as supplementary medication. My fever subsided in four days,” says Shubham.

But he fears that the homeopathic medicine, which he was taking, contained steroids which affected his body. But Dr Tarun assured him that unless the medication was taken from an unverified and non-degree holder, chances of steroids being present in his doses were low.

How he battled the fear of recurrence

“This year on August 24, my father’s birthday, we did not cut a cake thinking about my episode last year. Post the surgery, doctors suggested that I take three months rest. I would get morbid thoughts and wondered what if I remained sick and weak for the rest of my life. What if I were unable to work? I was always outdoors, meeting people and then suddenly I was sitting at home doing nothing,” says Shubham.

After two months of rest, he found a more sedate job. “The first day was the toughest and I was getting tired very easily. My body had become so weak that climbing a few stairs was a challenging task for me,” says he.

Doctors had suggested walking as a mandatory recovery routine. He began with taking walks on the terrace and now has progressed to doing light exercises. “Even lifting something from the floor, slamming the door, someone shouting loudly or firecrackers would scare me. Doctors had told me that I would have to take care of my heart the same way as I would a new-born child,” he adds.

He purposefully doesn’t get involved in arguments and fights out of fear that they might trigger another attack. An avid biker, he cancelled buying the machine out of fear.

His medication is meant to control heart rate, blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and dilute the blood. He now eats only home-made food without much oil and spices. He tried a bite of outside food after almost a year. And he has given up smoking for good, given the complexities that Delhi’s autumn pollution brings.

Shubham now sleeps on time, at around 10.30 pm, and walks half an hour every morning. Apart from digestion issues because of his heart medicines, he hasn’t reported any other difficulty. “So many people lose their lives. But I am really lucky to have survived because of timely intervention and awareness,” he says. Now he propagates the value of habit correction among his peer group, who are becoming the most susceptible to India’s non-communicable disease burden.

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Ankita UpadhyayAnkita Upadhyay is a health reporter with The Indian Express' Delhi bu... read more