Tomorrow is St. Mary’s RedDAY!

Heart Disease is a leading cause of death for Canadians.  Yet, most are unaware they may be at risk or when to seek care.

RedDAY is an opportunity to come together as a community to raise awareness of this serious health risk and how it can be prevented.

You can make a difference.

Wear RED in support, post images with #RedDayFriday, and visit redday.ca to register and support St. Mary’s Regional Cardiac Care Centre.

 

Paul’s Story

 

 

My name is Paul Allan. I’ve been working in real estate and real estate investing in the region for 36 years.

 

I came from a very, very athletic, very health conscious family. My mother was one of the original Toronto mermaids synchronized team. My dad was a competitive tennis player. I got into competitive cycling, swimming and skiing at a very young age. And fitness has always been a real cornerstone in my life. My father watched his father die of a heart attack on the kitchen floor of their home. Fast forward one generation. My father was airlifted from Florida after a stint, wind surfing, and my father required a quadruple bypass at the age of 69.

 

My cardiac story started following a very grueling mountain bike race that I was involved with.  In a nutshell, I felt a lot of very odd sensations in my chest. It was at a time where the nature of my business dictated a real 24 seven model personally, in terms of work involvement and given my father and grandfather’s history, there were a lot of questions going around in my head. You know, I was so fit. I was so healthy. I was doing triathlons. The discovery of heart disease was a real blow to the ego. I mean, it was a shock and it was unnerving and it was scary and all of that, but it was a real blow to the ego. I was admitted to St. Mary’s and to contrast 2002 to 2020, I was laid up in a hospital bed at St. Mary’s for boat five days, waiting for a bed or a slot at Trillium in Mississauga because we didn’t really have a cardiac center back then.

 

So that was 2002 things recurred after another race in 2008. And then it went on 2000, I believe, 2012, 2017.  I had blocked arteries. I had four stents, four different operations, a number of different angiograms over the course of these different events. I had really immersed myself in a lot of research, which I still do today on diet and fitness. And the one thing that I’ve learned is that there’s a huge difference between health and fitness.

 

You can’t run your way out of a bad diet. You can’t work out your way out of a bad diet. And this has become a real, real focus and a hobby in my life. I just feel a real responsibility to do my very best to stay healthy because of the pressure on our healthcare system and the great work these people are doing. And there’s so many people in need at the same time. I think we’ve all got to start chipping in and taking a little bit better care of ourselves, eating a little better and doing some of the personal hacking, you know, in terms of stress and everything else.

 

So it’s been a few years that I knew that I had symptoms. I had been feeling different sensations, different angina symptoms. And I had a couple of close calls where I was on my bike because I do a lot of cycling. It was on my bike, in the middle of the Beaver Valley, in the middle of nowhere and had to call an ambulance because I would have symptoms, a racing, heart rate, blood pressure, skyrocketing, things like this. So the number of angiograms that I’d had done really didn’t expose the problem until Dr. Higgins opened me up and checked around whatever she found was the right answer, because she did a great job. The staff did a great job. I mean, I’m just in love with these guys. They do such, such great work. St. Mary’s has come so far since my first little visit and my transfer to Trillium, and it was done all seamless. Everything went well.

 

As a resident of kitchen and Waterloo. You don’t realize how lucky you are to have these world-class facilities at your doorstep. I mean, right now at 64, I feel like the luckiest devil alive because I’ve got a new lease on life. I am feeling fantastic. I am riding upwards of an hour to an hour and a half from my wind trainer. I’m doing hour long walks. I’m back to doing light weights, and just sort of protecting my incision right now. I haven’t felt this good in three years.

 

My dad had his bypass surgery when he was 69 and lived to 98 and that’s with 1987 technology. So I figure if I don’t mess up, I’ve got pretty good odds of getting there myself. Maybe I can beat him by a year or two.