Roadside doctoring

My MDVIP doctor is Steven Weisman of Scottsdale, Arizona.

My story starts when I had what I thought might be a heart attack one night at 1:00 AM. This was the second time something like this had happened in the middle of the night and the previous event had turned out to be a non-issue so I didn’t go to the hospital as I should have, but called the doctor the next morning to see him. In the morning I felt completely normal and went to the office and they took a blood sample and did an EKG. The EKG didn’t show any issues and as I felt completely normal, we thought it was probably angina which I have had for years and has never been a serious issue.

However, the following afternoon at 6:00 PM I received a phone call from Dr. Weisman who had just received an urgent call from the blood testing company about the results of my blood test. Dr. Weisman was standing on the side of the road on his bicycle when he called, and I could hear the traffic going by. He said that my troponin levels were extremely high - normal troponin levels should be less than 17; my level was 179 - and that meant that I had in fact had a serious heart attack and needed to go to the hospital immediately.

Since I felt completely normal and healthy, I didn’t really want to go to a hospital and probably have some kind of surgery, so I hemmed and hawed a bit and tried to find some reason not to go. The good doctor was having none of it; he basically told me that this was not up for discussion or options, and that I should hang up the phone and have my wife drive me immediately to the hospital. He reminded me that he was on a bicycle on the side of the road and he needed to contact the hospital to get them ready for me, plus he needed to contact my cardiologist to determine who would perform surgery on me later that night.

So I quit arguing and my wife drove me to the hospital where they were expecting me. That night I had two stents implanted and learned that I had had the dreaded Widowmaker heart attack and was lucky to be alive.

I recovered fine and went through a cardio rehab exercise program and now feel better and healthier than ever. However, I’ll never forget that my doctor took a call on the side of the road when he was out biking and stood there and took the time and effort to get me into the hospital and arrange for my surgery for later that night.

That’s what a good doctor does.