Horse trainer survives heart attack at fair

Photo

Neighbors | Submitted.Danny Trent, who suffered a heart attack at the Canfield Fair, held a teddy bear that all open-heart surgery patients receive. Patients hold the bear against their chests to help with pain.

Shake Danny Trent’s hand and you know immediately that he’s a working man, a hard-working man. His hands are worn, rough with callouses that come from 50 years of training horses. His face lights up when he talks about the horses he’s trained, especially Haha, the 3-year-old racing colt who won race 6 on Aug. 30 at the Canfield Fair. Haha has also won at tracks in Columbus and Wellington, but Trent who may be the biggest winner. He survived a heart attack that rendered him unconscious moments after settling Haha into his stall at the fair.

Trent, a resident of Delaware, Ohio, went to fill a bucket of water for his horse and doesn’t remember what happened next. What he does know is that if it weren’t for a team of healthcare providers who worked together seamlessly, he wouldn’t be around to talk about it. He suffered a massive heart attack just outside the speed barn at the fair early Saturday morning and collapsed.

“I been short of breath every once in a while, but I’d just sit down,” Trent said, explaining that he didn’t know he had a heart condition.

Two security guards saw him go down and rushed to help. They called for paramedics and started CPR. When the paramedics arrived two minutes later – three paramedic teams are stationed on site during the Canfield Fair – Trent had no pulse and no respiration.

They shocked him twice with an automated external defibrillator to jump start his heart, then started an IV and performed a 12-lead EKG. The EKG transmitted critical information about Trent’s condition to doctors in the emergency room at St. Elizabeth Health Center, speeding his diagnosis so treatment could begin as soon as he arrived.

When the ambulance arrived at the hospital, Trent was immediately taken to the cardiac catheterication lab where Dr. Wahoub Hout, a cardiologist/interventionalist, and the CVL team performed a cardiac catheterization that determined he needed heart bypass surgery. Trent had blockages in three of the major arteries leading to his heart.

The following morning, Dr. Jeffrey Fulton, a cardiothoracic surgeon at St. Elizabeth’s, performed a triple coronary artery bypass on Trent’s heart.

“I was afraid, but I knew I had to have it. I wasn’t going to walk out alive if I didn’t,” Trent said. “These are one heck of doctors here on this hospital staff – they brought me back alive. Not too many people survive what I went through.”

Trent was released from St. Elizabeth Health Center the Saturday after his surgery with plans to rest.

“I can visit my horse, I just can’t do no work,” he said.