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Taken to heart: Unaware of health issue, man finally heeds warning signs
By JOANN JONES
Bill Tomory of Canfield used to eat deep-fried fish and french fries frequently for lunch, he didn’t like salads or vege- tables, and he felt he got enough exercise just doing projects around the house.
And when he experienced shortness of breath while mowing his front lawn in May 2010, he chalked it up to being 40.
But when it happened again as he was mowing in the exact same spot, he said he became a bit concerned.
“My wife, Maggie, said I better go see my cousin Jim,” Tomory said, explaining that “Jim” was Dr. James Shina, a physician from Austintown.
“Still, I thought nothing about it,” he said. “About three days before my appointment, though, I dug out a tree stump that had a big dirt ball on it. I made one motion [to move it] and about passed out. That’s when I knew something was definitely wrong.”
Tomory, the operations manager at City Printing Company in Youngstown, had no idea he was in serious trouble.
At first, tests on his heart showed no problems, but Dr. Shina wasn’t satisfied with what he saw.
“Jim told me he’d been fooled before,” Tomory said. “He said ‘Let’s do a stress test just to make sure.’”
“I didn’t get two minutes into the stress test when they could tell there was a problem from the EKG,” he said. “The test had five steps, and at the beginning of the second step, I started getting short of breath.”
Dr. Shina asked Tomory to stop and see him before he left the office.
“You failed the test miserably,” Tomory recalled him saying. Dr. Shina told him to go back to work while the doctors sent the information to a heart specialist. Within two hours, Tomory said, Dr. Shina had called him back and said his situation was very serious.
“He told me I had two choices,” Tomory said. “I had to promise him I wouldn’t do anything and just lay low — not even wrestle with my kids or run up the stairs — or he could admit me to the hospital.”
Four days later, he had a heart catheterization at ValleyCare Northside Medical Center, where Dr. Michael Scavina told him he had five blockages — two into which they could put stents and three that needed surgery. Dr. Scavina recommended all five blockages be treated by open-heart surgery.
“The minute they said ‘open heart,’ I wanted to go to Cleveland because I felt Cleveland Clinic was the place to be for this,” Tomory said. “Ten years before, my mom had had surgery for a brain aneurysm there. I knew the Cleveland Clinic was that good.”
“Dr. [Alejandro] Franco’s nurse guaranteed he would do the surgery if I stayed,” he said. “Besides, they were concerned if I went to Cleveland, I’d have to have doctors’ visits and consultations. They said it had to be done now.”
“This was a Thursday,” Tomory said. “We agreed the surgery would be done on the Tuesday after Memorial Day. When the nurse came in at 4 o’clock, she said he wasn’t going to discharge us — surgery was scheduled for the next morning.”
“I started making phone calls, and my wife picked up the kids,” he added, “but I had never been more calm in my life. It never entered my mind that it would be anything but a positive outcome.”
Tomory, at the time an elder at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Austintown, said he told his two boys, Lucas and Jacob, that he would see them tomorrow.
“‘I’m going to do this,’ I said.”
Although the heart catheterization had shown five blockages, Tomory’s heart actually had six, which the doctors found during the surgery.
“I had no idea what open-heart [surgery] involved,” he said.
“After the fact, I looked it up on the Internet. I wouldn’t have changed my mind, but it would have scared me. I learned that a family friend [a physician’s assistant on the surgical staff] was actually holding my heart in her hand. That’s when I knew it was serious.”
He said a nurse told him they had laparoscopically harvested a 30-inch vein from his leg.
“That’s what they used for all six bypasses,” he said. “They pulled it out like a night crawler.”
Maggie Tomory waited for several hours, receiving updates from the doctors every couple of hours.
“Before the surgery, we didn’t have time to think about it,” she said, “but when it was over, holy cow.”
Taking it easy in order to recuperate after surgery was difficult for Tomory, who said he doesn’t like to sit still. He was able to return to work part time three weeks later, thanks to his boss, who drove him there until he was released to drive.
Tomory said he was blessed that he hadn’t had any damage, but there were several warning signs of heart trouble he should have seen.
“I was hunting in southern Ohio and dragging a deer with my 60-year-old uncle,” he said. “I couldn’t keep up with him and had to keep asking him to stop.”
Having difficulty moving bookshelves and climbing an inflatable wall while on a family cruise were other signs he should have seen, he said.
“I was always warning him about being diabetic and the effect that would have on other organs,” Maggie Tomory said. “I’ve always tried to cook healthy, and I don’t have a deep fryer. But he always went out and bought lunches at work: heart attack in a sack.”
Tomory’s lunches — and dinners, for that matter — are much different these days.
“I eat all grilled chicken and fish,” he said. “No more deep-fried. I get salads, too. I haven’t had any prime rib since my surgery. I do miss that.”
He and his wife also try to walk a mile about four times a week, usually with their new puppy, Ranger.
“I feel like I need to do something for the American Heart Association,” Tomory said, adding that he had contacted the organization. “Maybe I can talk to younger people; maybe open someone’s eyes.”
“I’m willing to talk to anybody,” he said. “I feel so blessed. I feel like I dodged a bullet. Any one of those blockages could have killed me.”