Cardiologist Dr. Lou Kohl will join me tonight. Dr Kohl is my cardiologist, the man who saved my life just over nine years ago. On August 21st, 2015, I had a Widowmaker heart attack, and I was dead for over 20 minutes. I have a brain injury because of this experience.

I realize we all want to be talking about football.

I feel like I wouldn’t be doing my job as a survivor if I didn’t make other people aware of what it’s like to go through a heart attack and what it’s like to deal with heart problems. There is a massive amount of anxiety, anger and depression that comes with a heart attack.

There’s a good chance you or someone you love will deal with this during your lifetime.

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups.1
• One person dies every 33 seconds from cardiovascular disease.1
• In 2022, 702,880 people died from heart disease. That’s the equivalent of 1 in every 5 deaths.12
• Heart disease cost about $252.2 billion from 2019 to 2020.2This includes the cost of health care services, medicines, and lost productivity due to death.

• In the United States, someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds.3
• Every year, about 805,000 people in the United States have a heart attack.3 Of these, 605,000 are a first heart attack, and 200,000 happen to be people who have already had a heart attack.3
• About 1 in 5 heart attacks are silent—the damage is done, but the person is not aware of it.

We will discuss, from my side, what it’s like to go through and survive a heart attack and from Dr. Kohl’s side, what people overlook at about heart attack - common misconceptions, etc.

here.