Headache to Heart Attack

Headache to Heart Attack

An emergency room employees’ headache took a scary turn, and the Boone Health team was there to help.

Chris Duncan started his medical career as an EMT- paramedic in Kansas City in 1985. He then joined the U.S. Navy and served for four years as a hospital corpsman during peacetime. After the Navy, he attended nursing school and was a hospice nurse for 23 years.

Before joining Boone Health, Chris worked in Kansas City, Northern Arizona and Arkansas before moving to Columbia two years ago. He worked as a hospice nurse for a local agency for a while before switching roles to a case manager for the emergency room.

Chris’ role helps with improving throughput of patients from the emergency room that get admitted to the hospital. He interviews patients so when they get in a hospital room, the case management staff has a better idea of who they are, what their needs are and what their barriers to discharge may be. This helps the discharge process flow much easier which is better for the patient and better for the families.

On April 2, 2025, Chris woke up and went to work. It was a normal day. He had a pretty bad headache, mainly in the back of his head, but besides that, he felt fine. About an hour after he got to work, his headache intensified. He took some ibuprofen, but after 20 minutes, the headache hadn’t gotten better and Chris was also feeling slightly short of breath, something that he had never experienced before.

Chris went to Gerrad Bard, PA-C and asked, “Hey, can you listen to my lungs?” Bard had recently purchased an electronic stethoscope that not only allows one to hear better, but it shows heart rhythms as well. He listened to Chris’ heart first and was able to identify the arrhythmia immediately. He said, “We should get an EKG.”

Chris tried to brush it off, saying he’d get one later, but the provider insisted, “No, we need to do it now.” Clearly, he heard something that alarmed him.

By the time, Chris had walked into Emergency Room #2, the provider had alerted several nurses who hooked him to an EKG - EKG’s have 12 leads. Each lead represents a different direction of cardiac activity. Right away the first few leads showed what’s known as a “tombstone” pattern—classic for a heart attack known as the “widow maker.”

The STEMI team was called. Within minutes, it seemed like 17 people were in the room: one nurse was stripping off Chris’ clothes, another was asking for his phone to contact a family member, and another was asking if he had advance directives (a living will). It was chaos, but Chris could tell they were acting fast for a reason.

“It was pretty scary,” Chris said. “I was having the headache and didn’t associate anything with my heart. If I was having chest pains, I would have said, ‘oh my gosh I’m having a heart attack.’”

If a patient is having a heart attack in the hospital, a STEMI team is called. The STEMI team at Boone Health includes physicians, nurses and other staff from the emergency department and cardiology. They got Chris prepped for surgery and he was in the Cath lab in under 15 minutes.

They found that Chris had a 100% blockage in his left anterior descending (LAD) artery—a “widow maker.” They went in through his right wrist with a long probe and cleared the blockage. Then two stents were inserted to keep the artery open.

After leaving the hospital and taking some time off from work, Chris started outpatient cardiac rehab and attends three times a week. Chris admits he had to tailor the program to him because he has developed bad knees and a bad back.

“That’s one of the reasons I changed jobs,” Chris said.

The damage to Chris’ heart was significant. A healthy ejection fraction— how much blood the heart pumps with each beat—is normally 60-70%. Chris’ ejection fraction was 20-30%. An ejection fraction below 40% is a sign of heart failure. Cardiac rehab is helping Chris slowly build his heart muscle back up with the goal of improving his ejection fraction.

Looking back, Chris says, “I don’t know why I took a job here in the emergency room and left my industry after 23 years, but there must have been a reason. Due to the severity of blockage I had and because the heart attack was a widow maker, I might not be alive today.” He truly believes being at work—just steps from the EKG machine—saved his life. The Emergency Room staff, STEMI team, Cardiology, ICU and telemetry floors — everyone did exactly what they were supposed to do.

By Erin Wegner