FROM ‘HEALTHY’
TO HEART SURGERY CARDIOLOGISTS CATCH A CONDITION THAT COULD HAVE BEEN FATAL TO A LOCAL MAN.
M
ichael Hulings’ thoughts were swirling and it was hard to take in what he was hearing: He appeared to have a serious heart condition that might warrant a surgical procedure. “I was thinking, ‘Whoa, let me see what’s going on here,” the lieutenant with the Jersey City Police Department says. “I wanted to pump the brakes a bit.” Michael had reason to be taken aback. He was only 46, felt fine, had no pain or other heart-related symptoms and didn’t have high cholesterol. “I had been a little tired, but attributed that to life,” he says. At 5'11" and about 200 pounds, he’d known he was a tad overweight and had
Healthy Together
| 18 |
JCMC_Cardiac_SUM20_Final.indd 18
wanted to get back into shape. “I figured I should get a full physical because I hadn’t been checked out in a while,” he says. “That started the ball rolling.” Just before Thanksgiving in 2018, Michael went for a test of his heart function with a treadmill stress test. Doctors were concerned about an electrical abnormality, so Michael was sent for a nuclear stress PRAGNESH GADHVI, MD test, which uses
a radioactive dye to track blood flow. “That test showed that when I was at rest, everything looked okay,” he says, “but when I was exerting myself, one area at the bottom of my heart wasn’t getting enough blood.” That’s when the talk about a cardiac procedure began. “I wanted another opinion,” Michael says. Not quite sure where to turn, he contacted Jersey City Medical Center.
A SURPRISING FINDING “I’ve screened a lot of high-stress police and first responders,” says Pragnesh Gadhvi, MD, an interventional cardiologist with JCMC
Summer 2020
7/29/20 4:56 PM
