Ocean City, NJ heart attack survivor thanks AtlantiCare on birthday
February 21, 2022
For Immediate Release: February 21, 2022
Ocean City, NJ heart attack survivor thanks AtlantiCare on birthday
I am a different man,” says Stephen M. Van Natten, heart attack survivor, of Ocean City, NJ, as he celebrates his 54th birthday today. The husband and father of two says he is grateful that he got to the Heart and Vascular Institute at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center (ARMC) after suffering his heart attack last year. Hear his story.
“I was just finishing a bike ride in Ocean City,” Van Natten says of the May 5, 2021 incident. “I started to feel a pain in my back and then in my shoulder blade. I got home and my arm started to go numb.” He explains he was also short of breath. He says he knew something was wrong and that he needed to get to the hospital.
Burak Arkonac, M.D., medical director of the Catheterization Lab, and his team, performed Van Natten’s cardiac catheterization at ARMC’s Cardiac Catheterization and Rhythm Center. “Dr. Arkonac was wonderful,” says Van Natten. Within minutes of my arriving at the hospital, I was in the Cath Lab. He found my artery was 100 percent blocked and placed a stent to open it. My first symptoms started at about 5 p.m. I was in the Intensive Care Unit with my wife by 8 p.m.”
Van Natten’s wife Shelleymarie Magan arrived to take him home from the hospital just two days later, bearing a special gift. “It was t-shirt that said ‘Heart-Stopping’,” he says, remembering how the experience and his follow up care changed his life.
He met Vineshkumar Patel, M.D., associate director of Cardiology and medical director, Ornish Lifestyle Medicine™ Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, AtlantiCare, while he was in the hospital. Van Natten followed up with Patel after leaving the hospital. In addition to caring for Van Natten in his office, Patel recommended his new patient join the rehabilitation program. “What a difference it made,” says Van Natten.
Before my heart attack, I was a bit overweight. I lost weight quickly before my daughter’s wedding by eating mostly meat, but I quickly put it back on after the wedding. I believe that might have contributed to my heart attack.
By participating in the Ornish 6-week program, based at AtlantiCare’s LifeCenter, Van Natten has learned to live a fuller, more heart-healthy life. He says he found the group and personalized health, nutrition, stress management, fitness education and support helped him to feel and live better than he has in years. “I wish someone had told me about the benefits of a plant-based diet when I was in my 30s,” he says. “I enjoyed learning new ways to exercise from my fitness specialist and using the equipment at the LifeCenter. I loved the camaraderie that I experienced with other patients who were heart attack survivors. I keep in touch with some of them, still meeting for coffee or calling to check on each other.”
Van Natten says he is committed to continuing to eat well, exercise, manage stress and love more – all tenets of the Ornish program.
“I had always looked at food as a reward. Now eating healthy food, exercising and having energy are the rewards.”
He says he’s also going to continue to see his cardiologist.
“Dr. Patel is the first doctor I have ever had in my life whom I felt as though he is thinking of me even when I wasn’t in front of him as a patient,” says Van Natten. “He regularly texts me and checks in with me to see how I’m doing.”
Van Natten has a special tattoo showing an EKG and the number 12, “According the American Heart Association, only 12 percent of people survive the “widow maker’ heart attack. “I’m among the lucky ones because of the expert care the AtlantiCare team gave me so quickly,” he says.
