Heart Attack Didn't Sideline Local Coach
This article was first published in Health View, February 2001.
They didn't win the game that night. Yet what happened on a football field in Greenwood ended up being inconsequential to what took place afterwards on that hot August evening.
Active as ever, Eddie is enjoying coaching Carolina Academy's girls JV basketball team.
As Carolina Academy's varsity squad was packing up their equipment and piling on the bus for Lake City, their coach wasn't feeling well. "It wasn't really pain," head coach Eddie Huggins recalled, "but I had this discomfort in my chest."
Despite the discomfort, Eddie joked around with his players on the ride home and enjoyed a midnight supper at Shoney's. It was 4:00 a.m. before he and his wife Emma got home into bed. Less than an hour later, he woke up with a burning sensation in his chest. When a warm bath did nothing to relieve the problem, he asked Emma to take him to the Emergency Department (ED) at Carolinas Hospital System. Something just wasn't right.
What wasn't right was that the 48-year-old Florence native was having a heart attack. The ED staff at Carolinas quickly set into motion, skillfully responding to the medical emergency at hand. That's all Eddie remembers until he woke up in a hospital room three days later.
"I asked my wife when they were going to do the cath," he said, referring to the cardiac catheterization procedure that is used to identify blockages in the coronary arteries and other malfunctions with the heart. "She said that my eyes got kind of big when she told me I'd already had bypass surgery," he said.
Eddie's cardiac catheterization had revealed that six of his coronary arteries were blocked, with four of them serious enough to warrant surgical intervention. Along with the couple's two grown children, Jake and Jennifer, Emma made the decision to go ahead with the recommended coronary artery bypass graft surgery. "So we got on the telephone and started calling people we knew in the medical field to find out the best surgeon we could come up with," said Emma.
That surgeon was Robert "Chip" Phillips, Jr., M.D., board certified in general and thoracic surgery and a medical staff member at Carolinas Hospital System. Emma was impressed with her very first encounter with him. "When he came into the room in ICU, he sat down and said, 'I can spend two minutes, I can spend 20 minutes, I can spend two hours, whatever it takes to make you feel comfortable tomorrow.' Not only did Dr. Phillips take the time to educate Eddie's wife and children about the operation, he also took the time to learn about his new patient. "Before he left the room he knew everything about Eddie," Emma said. "He's a wonderful doctor and an incredible man."
The next morning, Eddie spent 4 hours in the operating room, where Dr. Phillips used arteries from his legs to create alternate routes around the four severely blocked arteries. These bypasses would allow blood and oxygen to resume a normal flow to the heart muscle. As Eddie recuperated over the next few days in the hospital, he found out that his surgeon's technical expertise was equaled by his dogged commitment to his patients. Emma recalled one incident in particular.
"I think people mean well, but sometimes they just say things without thinking. Someone had remarked to Eddie that they guessed he wouldn't be coaching anymore, and Eddie was just devastated. Dr. Phillips was passing by the waiting room where I was sitting, and I told him what had happened. He turned right back around and went and talked to Eddie," she said. "He told him that he would be back coaching in a month and not to worry about it, which put Eddie's mind at ease."
"Dr. Phillips has been so positive," Eddie added. "He's a good Christian man. I never got depressed after the surgery, and I attribute that to him," he said.
Dr. Phillips wasn't the only one pulling for Eddie. Students, former students and parents poured out to see the popular coach and teacher. And after 28 years of coaching football and basketball and teaching PE and physical science, that meant a lot of well-wishers. "The thing that makes Eddie so unique is how much he loves children. It doesn't matter how old they are, from three-year-olds in PE class to high school basketball players. He has a wonderful rapport with them, and they respect him," said Emma.
Tanya Stewart was one of Eddie's former students who visited him at Carolinas Hospital System. Now a home health occupational therapist, Stewart played on Eddie's basketball team for six years. "The staff was very attentive," she said. "They understood that Eddie would have lots of visitors and they treated every one of them with care. If he was tired, they would tell people that he really needed some rest, but to try coming back later. No one ever felt like they couldn't see him," Stewart said.
Eddie echoed Stewart's admiration of the physicians, nurses, therapists and technicians at Carolinas. "After I woke up from the surgery, I had great people taking care of me. I just can't say enough about them. They were fantastic." Emma added, "We could not have asked for any better treatment. Everyone was wonderful."
Eddie exercises three days a week in the Phase III component of cardiac rehabilitation at Carolinas Hospital System.
Six days after his quadruple bypass, Eddie was back home; three weeks later he was back at work part time. "My biggest concern [after the surgery] was my family, then getting back to my children at school," he said. By mid-October, he worked his way back to a full-time schedule, finding that his participation in Carolinas' Cardiac Rehabilitation Program aided his recovery immeasurably.
"The exercise portion of the program helped strengthen Eddie's heart, making it a stronger pump," said Barbara Garrick, R.N., M.N., Program Director of Cardiac and Pulmonary Rehabilitation. Garrick added that Eddie was a little cautious when he began Cardiac Rehab's Phase II, the 12-week exercise and education regime for patients with cardiac disease. Yet that's not at all unusual, she explained. "Many patients are apprehensive at first. They wonder if they can actually do this. After a while, they see that they can. Part of it comes from seeing other people who have had bypass surgery or a heart attack just like they have had," she said.
An important part of the cardiac rehab process is learning healthy lifestyle habits, many of which are new behaviors for patients. "The things they learn in rehab are not just for three months. They need to do these things for the rest of their lives," said Garrick. In Eddie's case, he didn't have a whole lot of major changes to make. "A lot of his cardiac risk came from family history," said Garrick. Eddie's father died of a heart attack at 63, and his brother had bypass surgery almost ten years ago.
Even though heart disease was evident in his family, Eddie never considered it in relation to himself. "I honestly thought I was invincible to stuff like that. I didn't smoke or eat crazy food. You just don't think something's going to happen to you," he said. Though his heart attack and ensuing surgery threw him a curve he hadn't anticipated, he found that, "Rehab gave my confidence back. Barbara and (exercise specialists) Heather Walston gave me encouragement. They push you, but don't push too hard," he said.
When Eddie looks back, he realizes that his body had been experiencing the effects of cardiovascular disease before he had the heart attack in August. He just didn't realize it at the time.
"I was the one who could stay up to one or two in the morning and get up at 6:00 and go. Yet I had started feeling tired all summer and had no idea why. I didn't know if it was a mental thing," he said. Though he enjoyed his summer position as camp director at Camp Pee Dee Pride, he had even begun wondering if he should retire from working with kids.
These days retirement is the furthest thing from Eddie's mind. He's thrilled with his recovery and equally thrilled about two special weddings coming up this year. Both his children got engaged over the holidays, with his daughter receiving a diamond ring on Christmas Eve. So the proud father who dons a tuxedo this spring will also be a man who's excited about an even healthier approach to life. "I have an opportunity to get back in better shape than I have been in years," he said. He's doing this by going to the hospital 3 days a week for the Phase III component of Cardiac Rehabilitation. Phase III allows him to continue exercising in a supervised, structured setting. "With the guidance of Barbara and Heather, I push myself."
Garrick appreciates Eddie as much as he admires her. "He's an asset to our program at Carolinas because he's so positive. He makes a difference to the other patients just when he walks into the room," she said. He also makes a difference to the students at Carolina Academy, who are overjoyed to have their beloved teacher and coach back to his regular routine. Eddie's pretty pleased with that as well. "I've got children to take care of," he said with obvious affection in his voice. "And without [Carolinas] Rehab and the good Lord and Dr. Phillips, I would not be working right now."
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