Do you have a thing you’re always talking about doing but never get to? At 46 years old Adrian Jones had a heart attack while mountain biking with friends. Determined to survive, Adrian had successful open-heart surgery and then, refusing a wheelchair, he walked out of the hospital on his 47th birthday with a new outlook on life. Today’s episode is the harrowing story of that life-changing day, how he survived, and a lead-in to part 2 when we’ll uncover his next life-changing event. Adrian is a wonderful storyteller with a vivid memory of the events of the day he almost died of heart failure. This episode will not only create awareness around this common disease, but it will give you an undeniable appreciation for your own life, and consideration for all the things you’ve been wanting to do but have been putting off doing. Show transcription available at www.iamthisage.com
Do you have a thing you’re always talking about doing but never get to? At 46 years old Adrian Jones had a heart attack while mountain biking with friends. Determined to survive, Adrian had successful open-heart surgery and then, refusing a wheelchair, he walked out of the hospital on his 47th birthday with a new outlook on life. Today’s episode is the harrowing story of that life-changing day, how he survived, and a lead-in to part 2 when we’ll uncover his next life-changing event.
Adrian is a wonderful storyteller with a vivid memory of the events of the day he almost died of heart failure. This episode will not only create awareness around this common disease, but it will give you an undeniable appreciation for your own life, and consideration for all the things you’ve been wanting to do but have been putting off doing.
Also in this episode is an ad for Adrian’s own podcast which you can listen to here: https://profoundawesomeness.com/
Click HERE to take advantage of Molly’s coaching offer.
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Show transcription availble here.
Do you have a thing you're always talking about doing, but you never get to? I'll do it later. You say, or you convince yourself it's unrealistic or even selfish. Have you ever thought about what you might do if you survived a near death experience? How might that kickstart your change? Welcome to I Am This Age Proving You are never too old.
It's never too late. So go do that thing you're always talking about. I'm Molly Cider, a certified professional life coach, speaker, and changemaker in my forties. My guest today is here to tell you the story of the day. He had a heart attack while mountain biking with some friends and he has an impeccable memory of that day's events even while struggling to breathe.
And it makes for quite an emotional story that will get you rethinking everything you've been putting off. But his heart attack wasn't his only life-changing event in recent years.
And so today's episode is only part one of two. So be sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the second half. Quick announcement before we get started. If you are someone who has been feeling sort of yucky yearning for more, or wanting to contribute something more, but have no idea where to start. I am offering a limited time coaching special.
So listen up. When you sign up for a coaching package, you'll get two free one hour sessions, and that is a huge deal, especially knowing how many people's lives have changed after literally one conversation.
And the best part is that if after one conversation, you never wanna come back, you don't have to. It's still free and you're off the hook. So if you are ready to have your life changed, if you're ready to step into your future with clarity and confidence and purpose, click the link in the show notes to sign up with me.
But don't wait, because this offer won't last forever. Okay. Now on to this life-changing story from Adrian Jones, otherwise known as aj.
Hi, my name's Adrian Jones. I go by Adrian or AJ for my initials. I am 53 years old and I live in Northern California where I was born. Uh, in fact, I grew up in Colorado, in Massachusetts, but did come back like a grownup boomerang back to essentially where I, uh, was when my mother carried me in her tummy.
Hi.
Hey, Molly.
I was, I wasn't sure if you were done.
I'm done now.
Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you for coming.
Yeah, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm just really excited for this conversation.
Okay,
So you live in Marin County, which is just north of San Francisco. It's mountainous, it's near the ocean.
There's a lot of mountain biking and hiking and outdoor sports. It's common for people to go mountain biking regularly. Were you one of those people who, biked a lot and exercised a lot? Or, was mountain biking sort of like a, an event for you?
Yeah. Here in Marin County I wanna say 80% of the land in Marin County is protected open space. So there's a lot of access to the trails, to the, to the area around us, which is incredibly wonderful. It is the birthplace of mountain biking way back, uh, back in the day, so to speak for me, I started to mountain bike. Again, well, I did it in my, when I lived in San Francisco in my mid twenties, and I picked it back up again in the summer of 2016.
I started mountain biking regularly. Regularly would be two to four times a week. I would try to get out on the trails and, and to your point, it is fairly hilly out here, so the trail riding is a lot of straight up and a lot of straight down. So it's, it requires some effort at times to get up to the, to the ridge line to be able to ride the ridges around here, which is some work and can be rather strenuous.
Yeah. I love how you call it hilly, and I call it a mountain. I'm, I live in the flats of Chicago.
Exactly.
Normally on my show I recap the guest big story, and then I ask lots of feeling questions and how-tos, but AJ's story is so compelling. It's a story about life or death, and so I decided I'd let him tell it.
You went out for a mountain bike one day with some friends. Tell us what happened on the ride.
Yeah, so this was October 8th, 2016, and I would went out mountain bike riding with three really good friends of mine and we had been riding together for at least two or three months. And so I, I said earlier at the, the top of the call that I started mountain bike riding again in August of 2016. So I'd been riding about three or four months when, uh, on Saturday October the eighth, three of us went out to ride up to a, a reservoir called Lake Log Anitas, which requires a bit of a climb to get up to the, the road that will take you out to the reservoir.
And that climb is on a fire trail. And you, we were riding up the fire trail in pairs of two, and I was in the back pair and we got up to the, there's a two-stage climb, so to speak. We got up to the first stage and we, we took a rest break as we, we call it a, a gentleman's rest stop where we, uh, stop and drink some water and catch our breath and tell a few jokes and one thing in another.
And, and we move our mouths more than we move our legs. Biking, probably. It's kind of a chatty group. And then we went up the, the second climb. And this is where things got really interesting for me.
Interesting is one way to put it. And I love that he put it that way because it highlights a sense of curiosity, even in a moment of confusion or panic. And even if, just in hindsight anyway, moving along.
So as, and I was in the, again, in the back pair going up, when all of a sudden I lost all the strength in my legs and like a snap of a finger, my legs, the strength in my legs vanished. And it was all I could do to. Get ahold of myself. Everybody kept riding ahead of me. I, I had a camel back with, with water in it. I started to guzzle some water and try to just gather myself, like, why did I get so weak? And I concluded that I had not, I was dehydrated the night before. I had gone out to sushi dinner with my daughter.
And as I'm standing there over my bike, like gasping for air with my very weak legs, I'm thinking I'm dehydrated because I had too much sushi, probably too much sake, not enough water at dinner, that's what's going on with me. Uh, so I drank some water, drank some more water, got back on my bike, used every ounce of energy that I could possibly muster to pedal stroke, one pedal after the other, to catch up with my friends.
And in, in trail riding etiquette, when you get split up in a group, you wait at the next trail juncture. For everybody so you can get your group back together and everybody knows where everyone's going when, when you get to a split trail situation. So they were waiting for me at the trail juncture at the end of this second stage of a climb. And when I, when I came up the trail and, and, and summited, if you will, in this little landing area with the three of them were waiting for me, the world started to spin in the most terrifying and unrecognizable way to me. I, I, I like to say that I was in a merry-go-round on a rollercoaster. I mean, the, the sensation was terrifying and it was all I could do to click out of my pedals, get off of my bike, and stumble over to a bush and it's there that I proceeded to, and I apologize for the, the, too much, the tmmi information of this conversation.
But I started to vomit all the contents of my stomach out over on this. Turns out it was a poison oak. Bush anyways important detail, I'm sure. But anyways,
a poison oak bush.
of course, it's poison oak bush, but there I am. So I'm, and, and, and as I'm, I'm bent over like the, an upside down capital letter L and you know, holding myself up my hands on my knees and I'm just thinking to myself, God, I'm really dehydrated and I'm, maybe I'm just a fat old man and I'm outta shape.
And this is a ride that myself and the, these three friends had done countless times over the last few months. So I was like, this has never happened to me. And I continued to throw up and then I concluded, you know what? Aha. I know what's wrong with me. I had sushi last night and I draw drew the short straw of getting bacteria with a side of shashimi, and that's clearly what I have is food poisoning.
So that was my narrative in my mind as I'm proceeding to throw up the contents of my stomach all over this helpless poison oak bush. And. Once that was done, I stood up and, and as confidently as I could s say and muster, I turned to my friends and said, okay, let's keep riding. And they, to a man, thank goodness, said, no way, something's wrong.
And I tried to convince them that no, nothing's wrong. I'm ready to ride and continue climbing up towards this lake log. Anitas, they had none. They wanted none of that. Again, thankfully, uh, I felt horribly and I, I wanted, I was the one who had arranged the ride and I wanted to complete the ride. If we turned around and went back, it would be cutting their rides short.
And everyone makes an effort with busy schedules to be together to make a hour and a half, two, two hour ride commitment together. So I felt really guilty about not being able to continue. And what we agreed on is that we would go down, but not the way we came back up, but we'd take a much longer way down so we could get some more time together on our bikes. So we started to go down this a different way than, than we had just ascended the trail. And we got on a, a flatter section of a fire trail and I up, and for, for that small period of time, I felt better. My legs were still weak, but I could ride and we were going downhill. So it didn't require a lot of exertion.
But once we got the, once the trail flattened out, I started to get a pain in my chest and I was riding my bike, like moving my body around, trying to evacuate this pain in my upper chest cavity. I thought it was a burp or maybe it was acid reflux associated with my, what I had thought was food poisoning.
Mm-hmm.
Again, I'm riding, we're riding in pairs, and I said to the, my friend Tom, who was next to me, I said, Tom, I've gotta get off my bike. And he's like, sure, no problem. And I hopped off my bike and it hurt. My chest hurt so much. That I just collapsed onto the, the fire trail and lay spread eagle on my back and proceeded to pound my chest like King Kong.
I just whale away at it with my fist left, right, left right, trying to just pound this burp or pain away and out of my body. And ultimately that didn't happen. The pain remained, but I got, got up, got back on my bike, and my friend Tom and I caught up to my, our other two friends who were waiting at yet another trail juncture.
And at that point I said to them, guys, I can no longer, I can no longer ride and control my bike. It's too much for me. I'm too weak right now. One of my friends went, took off down the trail to go to his house to get a car that he would meet us at the very bottom of the trail. At the trail head. And so I walked down, my other two friends walked with my bike.
I was so busy. Tripping over rocks or trying to avoid tripping over rocks and roots. And I was busy throwing up in little plants here and there. As we walked down this trail, we walked for 40 minutes
Wow.
down this trail with this extreme pain in my chest being nauseous, being incredibly weak. The world started to slow down, really slow down.
It was, it was kind of crazy, like I could see little bugs flying and I would zero in on them and they seemed to be moving in slow motion. It was just a, a really weird sensation. And towards the bottom where I could see my friend, he had taken off to go get the car. He was walking up the trail. Towards me.
And at that point I noticed that the ring and, and pinky fingers of both hands went completely and totally numb, as if I'd like laid on my hands funny. And the, the fingers had fallen asleep. It was like that sensation. So I'm wheezing with incredible chest pain. I'm throwing up. I'm weak as can be. Now my fingers are starting to go numb.
And at that point I'm thinking to myself, this isn't normal. This isn't a, a sensation that you associate with food poisoning. So if I had had bad sushi, why would my fingers be tingling? Like that doesn't make sense to me. Uh, my friend, he came up, he, he greeted me and he helped me walk pretty briskly to his car.
He threw me in the passenger seat of his car and we took off out of the parking lot and we went straight to the nearest fire department and he hopped out of the car, sprinted up to the doors of the fire department, started banging on the doors. No one answered. There was an emergency phone there. He picked up the receiver for whatever reason, it wasn't working.
Y'all an emergency phone that does not work. What 📍 the okay. Sorry. I'll stop interrupting so much.
Uh, he comes running back in the car and he takes off with me towards the nearest hospital, which is like two and a half miles away. And to get to the hospital, he had to drive literally right by my house like literally right by my house.
And as we drove by, I said to him, his name's Brad. I was like, Brad, just take me home. I'll take an Alka Seltzer and some Pepto-Bismol. I'm gonna lay down. I'm gonna be fine. He's like, Nope, you need help immediately. And I said, Brad, I don't have my wallet with me. I don't have my driver's license. I don't have an insurance card.
I don't have anything. Just take me home. And I'm saying this in between wheezing, like I'm wheezing and wheezing and wheezing with every breath. I'm laboring. And he's, he's like, Nope. And he's driving the, the car with his hands at 10 and two, just white knuckling, like is, if someone's trying to steal the steering wheel out of his hands, he's holding on it that tightly.
And, and my wife was out of town traveling this weekend for work. And our two kids at the time were, what, 12 and 14? I said, one, one last appeal to him. I said, just take me home. My kids are home alone. I, I need to be with my kids. And he's like, Nope, you need help immediately. So he drove right by my house as fast as he could possibly drive down the boulevard and made a right onto another street.
In lo and behold, we ended up at the hospital, Marin General Hospital. And I said, I'm getting out and I'm gonna walk into the emergency room. I walked into the emergency room. And the, and I'll tell you what, Molly, this is a, uh, an emergency room hack.
Yeah.
The fastest way to get seen that I know in an emergency room is to say the following. Hi, my name's Adrian Jones. I'm 46 years old. My chest hurts and I'm having trouble breathing. They moved so fast, lightning fast within what felt like a blink of an eye. A nurse was standing next to me with a gurney for me to climb onto. And before you know it, he had whisked me into the into the emergency room where he pulled me into a room full of computer monitors and two technicians peeled back my mountain biking shirt and put leads on my chest and started to do an E K G.
And an E K G measures the rhythm of your heart. And I, it was not my first rodeo for getting one of these. So I said to the technicians, I'm talking to them like I still have food poisoning. I'm like, guys, I'm just, I think I had bad sushi. I don't know why you're doing an ekg. I think I just need some medicine for my upset stomach and this heartburn that's really hurting.
They didn't talk to me. They whispered to each other. They ripped the wires off my chest and ran with me down the halls into the bowels of the emergency room where, uh, more nurses threw those blue curtains around me. Just sh that's how the, the emergency room was set up, was just full of curtains and threw some curtains around the, my gurney, and they descended upon me and started to put IVs in my arms and oxygen meters, reading meters on the tips of my fingers.
And then a nurse came running in and put a defibrillator on my chest. And at that point I was like, whoa. What is happening. And immediately thereafter, a doctor walks in and he swings open the blue curtains and closes them behind him. And he said, Mr. Jones, I'm the cardiologist on staff today. I'm here to tell you you're having a heart attack.
Oh my goodness. This is one of those moments we all fear, we all think it won't happen to us. And we all know someone who it's happened to anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of the story, but AJ has turned his heart attack experience into a podcast and it's a really good one. So I thought, what better time to promote it than right in the middle of this very intense near death experience.
📍
Okay, so we left off with the doc saying, Mr. Jones, I'm the cardiologist on staff today, and I'm here to tell you that you are having a heart attack.
Okay. What did, what was that like to hear?
It was a trip, and by that I mean I was looking for a split second. I felt myself looking in the mirror of my mortality, like, this is it. Like I'm potentially on the path to dying right here. But at the same time, I had a thought, well, if I'm gonna have a heart attack, thank goodness I'm in the hospital I'm in the right place to be cared for and treated.
So at least I've got that going for me. And at least I got down off the trail. But to hear that you're having something that we. At least I'll speak for myself. That terrified me that I was having the actual event. Yeah, it was scary and it was like, yeah, I'm mortal and this potentially, this could be it.
Yeah. Were there any other feelings? Like did you have any, like, was there any like feeling of like acceptance? I mean, you did say that at least you were in the hospital, but was there anything else or you were just flat out terrified,
No, I, yeah, no, there was an element of, I I, I, I think your, your use of the word acceptance is a good one. Yes, I was, I was terrified but that wasn't the prevailing emotion that I experienced. It was, thank goodness, I'm in the hospital and I'm surrounded by nurses and a cardiologist.
Okay, so then you, they wheeled you into surgery, I'm guessing?
Yeah. So what happened after that is a, a nurse came running over to me carrying two forms, two to release forms. One was to do a stent procedure and the other was to do open heart surgery. And it just, and it, and she's like, I need you to sign these. And I'm so weak at this stage. I could barely hold the pen that she placed in my hands.
I could barely hold it. And I, I couldn't sign. I mean, I was just too weak and wheezing and laboring to get a breath in and just feeling so much pain and dizziness that she said, all I need you to do is just swipe your, just swipe a mark on these forms and that'll, that will serve as acknowledgement slash a signature.
That you give us permission to, to do one of these procedures on you today. So that's what I did. I just swiped my hand on both the documents and at that point, two or three nurses took me and started running slash sprinting down the halls to the cath lab where they would eventually proceed to do a stent procedure. And I have to tell you, on the way from the emergency room to the cath lab for surgery, I had three really powerful and framing thoughts that really inform who I am today. So I'm laying on the gurney, the ceiling tiles are racing by overhead. I'm being run to the operating room. And the first thought I had was, want Liz as my wife.
I don't want Liz to fly home a widow like I. I don't wanna put this at her feet. If I'm gonna check out of here, I want a proper goodbye. And this is not gonna go down to, this is not gonna happen today. This is not how we're gonna do this. My second thought was, why did I leave my kids to go mountain biking that morning and not tell them that I love them? Like I raced. I ran out of the house to meet my friends cuz I was running late. So I just w hollered at my kids as I ran out the door. I'll be back in an hour and a half, two hours and they, they were on their, their phones. Like I called them my screen ages and they would, you know, look up and grunted at me or something.
But I mean, it wasn't, I'm like on the gurney going, no, I, I'm gonna tell 'em I love 'em when I say goodbye to them. Like, that's mandatory. And then that led to my third thought, which was very framing. And so to your point was I terrified whatever, but this third thought came over me that was really powerful and it. Are we allowed to use swear words on your podcast, Molly?
Yes, we
Okay. have an expletive warning. Okay. Well, not, I mean, because I'm not trying to use gratuitous language, but in the moment I thought to myself, this is not gonna fucking happen today. I am walking out of this hospital of my own, two feet of my own fucking volition.
That is exactly what's gonna happen today. And then they swung, swung me into the cath lab and proceeded to do what I found out later to be a 45 minute procedure to, um, they went in, they sent a scope in through my right wrist, and they did angioplasty to open up my left anterior descending artery. I was having a widow maker heart attack, which is, you know, frightfully dangerous.
And they opened up the artery and put a stent in there. And as soon as they opened up the artery, I knew that they had, because I could breathe. It was like it was the most beautiful breath I'd taken in so long. I just full free of pain, free of limitations, just a huge, beautiful breath. I could breathe it out without pain.
I took another beautiful breath in and breathe it out. And that's when I knew that they had opened things up and cleared things and, and it would think in my mind, even though I'm on the gurney with some groovy drugs in my system and I'm fading cuz I'm having the throws of a very serious heart attack.
Um, I knew, I felt like I would be okay.
Wow, I didn't realize that you would be awake. I mean, even though you were heavily drugged.
I was heavily Dr. Yeah, yeah. I remember them moving my arm and my neck around a lot. I mean, I wasn't, I don't think I could sing the alphabet. I don't think I was that copass MEUs, but I was definitely like I was present enough where I was aware that there were people working on me and that I was in pain and, and then all of a sudden the pain was gone.
Like, yeah.
And you know, they every second counts when you're having a heart attack and strokes too. Like every second counts. And so I. From the time I got in the hospital to the time to surgery, like hospitals are measured on that when it comes to cardiac events, like how fast are you, what's the time to surgery?
So every second, once you have this issue, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm an, I've become an open book with my story. I'm very open about what we've just discussed cuz I want to help drive preventative action and awareness so that if someone goes through something similar and has these symptoms, they know, boom, this could be a heart attack.
They need help ime, they need to be seen immediately because every second matters. And so it did in that, that particular day, October 8th, 2016, every second matter, to get me into the cath lab, to do the surgery, to get the stent in my left anterior descending artery.
Yeah. On that note too, do you remember before you went for the. Bike ride that day, like how you were feeling physically? Do you remember starting to not feel great, or were you like, I'm good, let's go.
Yeah, I f I felt great. It's a beautiful, quintessentially perfect fall afternoon, beautiful blue sky warm. I'm with three of my super close friends. Like, what a great way to start the day. It's a Saturday, it's weekend like I was feeling great and just spiritually and emotionally. I felt great. Physically, I felt fine.
I was out to go have a ride that I'd done multiple times already with these guys, so it was, there was nothing unknown about it going into it, so I felt mentally and physically in a really good place.
It sounds like your friend Brad probably knew what was happening to you. Did he?
He did. He did. So he was previously a volunteer firefighter for his community here in Marin. And so he's in, in H as after the fact, you know, he told me he, that he saw a thing, he saw signs and he didn't tell me about it because he didn't want me to worry. He didn't wanna send me into a, a panic tailspin.
That's why he was adamant about getting me to the hospital and bombing by my house as we drove. I could like wave to my house as we drove by it. And he's like, Nope, we are not stopping. Um, so yeah, thank, thankfully, thankfully he did that because I think had the role been reversed and I didn't have that awareness, I think I would've been really proud of myself if I took my friend home.
I'd be like, wow. I was a good friend. I took him home and got him, got him onto his couch so he could have his Alka-Seltzer and his Pepto-Bismol. But no, that I, if he had done that, I, I'm most likely, you know, talking to doctors, I would've had a cardiac arrest and died.
Yeah.
It wouldn't have been long. It wouldn't have been long.
Okay. So thank goodness for Brad.
Thank goodness for Brad. Yep.
We love you, Brad. You are going into the I Am this age Virtual Hall of Fame, along with cousin Becky from Melissa's episode and a few others.
Anyway. AJ was discharged from Marin County Hospital on his 47th birthday, which just happened to be the same hospital where he was born, and as he said he would, he declined the wheelchair and he walked himself out. But AJ's story does not end there.
Where was your mindset
So, you know, when I got home, you know, for the first several weeks I was, so, first of all, you go on leave from work and I was on leave for four months, put on leave for four months.
So I had, could have no communication with work. They didn't want any, in any interactions in case something happened as a result of work. And I, and it was, could have been considered a, I think an insurance terms, a contributing factor. So if I had a second heart attack, cuz I talked to someone at work about something stressful, that would've been bad.
So they're like, you can't talk to work. Um, yeah. Yeah. And then I. I, I was living a life full of n doctor's appointment, nurses appointments, and, uh, working with a nutritionist as part of my recovery plan. And then I was also put into cardiac rehab where you go three days a week to a fac spec, uh, specific and special facility where they hook you up, put leads on your chest to hook you up to an EKG machine, and you, over time increase the, the stress in your aerobic workout that you do in the facility.
So, for example, right after I got discharged, I was walking on the treadmill very gingerly, very slowly. Three months later when I graduated out of cardiac rehab, I was running on the treadmill, a sweaty mess. My psychology and, uh, was much better. I, I recovered. Psychologically that I, I could exercise and push myself, but to, to get back to your question, those first few weeks, like I would turn myself into a bit of a hermit.
Like I wasn't ready to, outside of these appointments that I had to go to, I didn't want to really engage with this with my community. Which may sound weird. I just, I felt like the universe had shifted for me in a such a dramatic way that I needed time to recalibrate to it. So I needed to just spend time at home with my kids, with Liz, just getting my feet back underneath me psychologically, literally, you know, literally and figuratively, like just getting things going again, and realizing and gaining that confidence that I can go to sleep and I'm gonna wake up and I'm still gonna be here like,
Mm-hmm.
Right out of having a heart attack.
Like those first few nights were a little tough, like, am I gonna have another one? Is it gonna happen tonight? Like once you have it, they say, once it happens, once the likelihood it happens again goes up. So is it, what's it gonna look like? When's it gonna happen? How do I think about it? So it took, I mean, it took me a while to psychologically move past, move through those doors and get to a better place on the other side.
Um, was there any sort of grief or shame that you were feeling? Like anything like that?
No shame.
Good.
Yeah, definitely No shame. Uh, grief is an interesting question. I think there might have been a hint of grief. I've never really thought of it in that context. But now that you ask the question, I think there might have been some level of grief around the old me.
Hmm.
Parts of the old me are gone and I need to say goodbye to the old me, or parts of the old me.
I think really I was feeling just like relief, some level of fear slash concern slash worry about, well, will this happen again? And 1000% gratitude, like, I'm still here. I don't know what's next. I don't know what's around the corner, but I just survived something that not many people get to survive.
And I'm thankful that I am breathing these glorious, fresh breaths of air. And I'm with my kids. I'm with Liz. Okay, let's reboot from here.
I'm getting chills listening back to his story, but before we move on, I needed to know how you go from near death, from a heart attack to living again. How does a person who one minute thinks, okay, this is it, this is the end.
Then go back into the living world, because whether we recognize it or not, there is an important adjustment period in there.
The cardiac rehab was huge, um, and I can't recommend it enough if, you know someone is going through some, has, has heart surgery or something along those lines in cardiac rehab is. Potential solution. I can't recommend it enough. Personally, from my experience, that played such a massive role, Molly, in terms of getting me back mentally and physically where I could, felt like I could walk again.
And as I started to walk more on the treadmills, I started to take myself for walks like I my, I would take myself for walks by myself or with our dog. And quite honestly, I'd start by walking around the block and then I would start walking around my, our block in the block next to ours. And that's steadily led to more and more strenuous hikes in the, the hills that we were talking about, or the mountains as you call them here. Uh, coming from Chicago. Uh, but started to, to get much more strenuous. And, and it became a point of mine, like when I went to cardiac rehab, I was gonna sweat, uh, not to be gross or over the top here, but I mean, it was to work your body into a sweat after you've had a heart attack. It's gonna be a little scary, but I was like, I gotta get there.
I've gotta convince myself that I can do this and that everything is gonna be fine and everything is gonna be fine. And, and so it just took those reps of just three times a week doing cardiac rehab and when I wasn't doing that, taking the dog for a walk those walks around the block or walks up in the hills, like, just help g get me back to tackle.
My quote unquote coming out party in our community. Well, that took a little while. It took a a fundraiser event in, in November that really got me out of the house in a social capacity. And then that was life changing in and of itself.
I think it's what we're gonna get into. I'm not sure where, what you want, when you want to get to that part. So I'll just leave it there for now.
Thank you, aj. That is in fact a perfect place to end it for now. Oh my goodness. What a harrowing story. And you only know the half of it. So make sure you are subscribed and while you're at it, rate and review so you don't miss part two of AJ's enormous life change story and everything he's learned and how he's applying it to his life today.
And don't forget, if you're loving these, please share them with someone you think will love them too. The more we grow, the more we can help. You grow All of the links for me and for AJ are in the show notes. I'd also like to dedicate this episode to Cousin Ed, who just last week suffered his own heart attack while playing golf, but at 85 wasn't able to survive his heart attack surgery.
Cousin Ed, rest in peace. We love you. Thank you to David Ben Perrot for Sound Engineering. Dan Daven for the music, David Harper for the Artwork. I am this age as produced by Jellyfish Industries. I'm Molly Cider, your host. Catch you all next time.
We love you, Brad.