Dad had smoked for many years. He quit smoking in 1967 or so, after he had hernia surgery. The respiratory Staff had brought in a smallish machine on wheels, which he breathed into and coughed up "junk" out of his lungs. This was a good thing. Amongst the mucous he coughed up was black "soot" like looking stuff. The Respiratory Therapist told him that the black "soot" was the inhaled tar and nicotine from smoking cigarettes. Dad quit smoking day, and as far as I know he never smoked again.
In 1989, Dad had a heart attack while driving on a small country road to the Belmont Country Club Golf Course. He was driving his little gold colored Subaru. He parked the car in the lot and then tried to pick up his golf bag. [The golf bag is big and leather that he purchased in Mexico. We still have it in our garage.
Almost immediately, he stopped due to chest discomfort and profuse sweating.
He should have called 911 from the pro shop, but instead he drove 4 to 5 miles back home. It was the same road that he drove to get to the country club with orchards on either side. [My concern at that point was that he could have lost consciousness and crashed into a tree, or worse, hit another car.]
He came home, and told my mom what he was experiencing. She called their MD, who told her to take him to the hospital right then and there. But "OH NO"! He HAD to take a shower first because he was sweating so much.
My mom called me at work around noon. She said "the doctor thinks Dad made it to the hospital before he had a heart attack."
I paged Brian. He was going down to Anaheim because his mother had a heart attack the day prior to this. He said he was surprised when the pager [we had no cell phones then], and saw it was our home phone number. He called and I told him Andrew and I were going to Fresno because of Dad being in the hospital.
Andrew and I drove straight to the hospital. The staff actually let us both up into ICU. Once in Dad's room, Andrew immediately got on the bed [he was only 3 years old at that time].
Dad had a heart cath which showed that the heart attack was due to a blocked off Circumflex cardiac artery. [This vessel curls around the heart to the back left side.] He had developed "collaterals" which helped to increase the amount of oxygen to the back side of the heart as the blockage continued to obstruct more and more of the circumflex.
As a side note, before leaving Santa Maria, I had grabbed the bill from the State to renew the car registration.
Once we had seen Dad and made sure he was ok, Mom took Andrew back to their house, and I found a AAA close by. It was brand new. It was Friday at 1630. The AAA closed at 1700.
I ran in with the bill and was talking with the man at the counter as to what I needed to do. I looked at the bill and I needed the car to be smogged before I could get reregistered!
I mentioned that to the man at the counter and he said: "No worried we can do it here! You will be our first person here to get their car's catelitic converter checked!"
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