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Heart Survivor Book Proceeds to Heart Walk

September 13, 2017 By Eric Douglas

heart survivor book coverCharleston author Eric Douglas will donate proceeds from his book Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery to the 2017 Charleston Heart Walk. Douglas wrote the book to detail his recovery from open-heart surgery and his return to fitness to inspire others facing the same diagnosis.

In January 2016, Douglas visited his doctor to rule out the possibility of a heart problem before addressing what he thought were heartburn issues. He failed his stress test and was swept away into an odyssey of surgery and recovery.

“It can be daunting to hear the words ‘heart disease.’ You don’t know what you have to do to recover, or even if you can recover back to doing what you want to do. I don’t hold myself up as an ideal, but I do know what worked for me and I use that as an example throughout the book,” Douglas explained.

Douglas set a goal of returning to fitness so he could be cleared to scuba dive again. He knew what he would have to do and immediately set out to make it happen. Along the way, he overcame hurdles and suffered setbacks. Douglas’ story is for anyone diagnosed with heart disease whether they are treating their condition with diet and medications, received stents to open arteries or have had open-heart surgery. To further illustrate the recovery process, Douglas surveyed more than 100 survivors to learn about their diagnoses, the changes they made in their own lives and how their own recoveries progressed.

“The American Heart Association is a great resource of information when it comes to what you can do, and need to do, when it comes to getting and staying healthy. They also fund a lot of research into ways to improve our heart health. Obviously, it’s personal for me now, but I want everyone to understand it should be personal for them, too. Heart disease is the number one killer for men and women in the United States and Stroke is the number five killer. We need to improve our health so we can live longer and better,” he said.

For the month of September, Douglas has pledged to donate the royalties from the sale of the book Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery to the Charleston Heart Walk. The book is available in softcover and as an Kindle ebook.

To donate to, or join, Douglas’ heart walk team, Team Second Chance, visit the Heart Walk website.

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Introduction to the book Heart Survivor

January 31, 2017 By Eric Douglas

The following is most of Chapter 2 from the book Heart Survivor. I thought it was important to help my readers understand that I should have recognized the signs and symptoms of impending heart issues, but even with that experience, I still denied what was happening to me. It nearly cost me my life.

Who I Am

My name is Eric Douglas and I am a heart survivor. I like that phrase, but I also find it a little odd. I survived a heart attack and quintuple bypass surgery. I’ve survived cardiac rehab and have worked my tail off to get my life back.

My story is important because it’s unusual and it’s not. I’m 49 years old and have no family history of heart disease. I am not a super athlete, but I have always been active. I’m a scuba diver and have made a living for the last 20 years or so traveling the world teaching about scuba diving and dive safety. I’m also a son, a husband and a father.

One of the keys to this story, though, is that I am a full-time writer. I work from home and go to work every day with my computer. I tell stories for a living. What I’ve gone through, and what I’m writing about now, is the most important story I will ever tell as far as I’m concerned.

To back up a bit, I was born in the summer of 1967 in Charleston, West Virginia. I grew up what I would call lower middle class. I didn’t have everything, but I don’t remember wanting for a whole lot either. My brother and I have talked about it many times that we thought we had a good childhood. We played outside, rode horses, swam and did all the things kids growing up in the 70s did. I remember getting a home weight set at 11 or 12 years old. My brother and I would work out and that expanded into high school and college. In my 20s, I could bench press 365 pounds and squat and deadlift more than 400 pounds each.

Of course, growing up in Appalachia in the 70s and early 80s came with lots of casseroles and fried food. I spent a lot of time in my 20s in the gym, but I also spent a lot of time at the bar, consuming loads of empty calories. Still, I could balance it all out. I never had six-pack abs, but I carried my body well.

I bring all of that up simply to suggest that while I was active and relatively fit in my youth, my guess is my heart disease began back then.

I’ve been fortunate to tell stories my entire professional life. My degree is in journalism from Marshall University. I’ve worked in newspapers. I’ve written for magazines. I’ve produced photographic and audio documentaries. I’ve even had a collection of my photographs exhibited in Russia, France and the United States.

Right out of college, I looked at my minimal resume and decided I needed to add something to it that would make me stand out. I decided to learn to scuba dive. That decision gave me the opportunity to move from West Virginia to California to North Carolina. It also took me all over the world, visiting every continent except for Antarctica. The experience and adventure of diving is probably what makes my story interesting.

I said many of the seeds of my heart disease were likely sown in my childhood or youth. My recent history is just as important, however. In the last eight years, I’ve gotten a divorce, lost my job, moved a couple times and remarried. My stress levels have seen better days. On top of that, working for myself, sometimes wondering how I am going to pay my bills, has kept things tense.

Especially in the last few years I have felt guilty about getting up from my computer and exercising. That was time I felt I should be spending working at my desk. My health took a back seat to the stresses and pressures of daily life.

As I said, my story is different in some ways, but I think it is also extremely typical, too. I’ve dealt with life stresses. I didn’t always eat well or take the best care of myself. Most importantly, I didn’t see it coming when the diagnosis came out of left field.

Why I should have known better

In 1998 I moved to California to work in the recreational scuba diving industry. I was working for the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) and having the time of my life. Every conversation around the water cooler had to do with scuba diving. PADI is the world’s largest scuba training agency and we had offices and affiliates all over the world. I was already a diver and a divemaster when I went to work there, but I was hired as a writer. I worked on the quarterly magazine we published as well as on new course development.

Browsing a dive magazine in the office one day, I read about the role of the diver medic in the diving community and set out to earn the certification for myself. My first step was to complete an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) course at a local community college. I often tell people that I took my first cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) course when I was nine-years-old. I became a CPR instructor in 1999 shortly after becoming a dive instructor, but this was my first real taste of emergency medicine. While the role of the EMT is limited, I absorbed a lot of theory about human physiology and how to provide care in an emergency.

From there, I took a course at the local hyperbaric chamber on how to provide emergency care for injured divers. It was there that I first performed CPR on a real patient. That was an experience I won’t ever forget, but the details aren’t important. Suffice it to say that the patient did not recover.

That all led me to my next position at Divers Alert Network (DAN). I spent nearly 12 years there running the training department. My job involved developing first aid and CPR courses specific to the diving world. I wrote the organization’s first AED training course and then went on to develop a series of CPR courses for the lay provider and for the professional rescuer, writing the manuals and the video scripts. I also organized a course to teach others to be diver medics.

Every five years, I read the latest Emergency Cardiac Care guidelines from the American Heart Association and the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation.1 I revised our training programs and demonstrated CPR all over the world. I issued more than 1000 certifications to people who wanted to be CPR Instructors and Instructor Trainers.

Literally every week I discussed CPR, first aid and the issues of the body, health and resuscitation. I know the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and sudden cardiac arrest as well as anyone. I’ve written the line that Denial is a sign of a heart attack dozens of times.

With all that information, why didn’t I recognize Denial in my own situation?

I denied the possibility that I was having a heart-related problem. I ignored it, or justified it away. Most importantly, I didn’t tell anyone how I was feeling. I didn’t want to alarm my loved ones. And then came my actual diagnosis.

If you want to read more, check out the book Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery.

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Filed Under: Books, Heart Blog, New Releases

Thriller author details personal recovery from heart surgery

January 26, 2017 By Eric Douglas

heart survivor book coverAuthor Eric Douglas decided to focus on a personal adventure for his new book Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery.

On January 25, 2016, Douglas failed a stress test and ultimately had quintuple bypass surgery. Looking back over the previous year, he recognized many times that he denied symptoms and ignored the possibility that his heart was in trouble. Following the surgery, Douglas made two promises: to be as public as he could about his own recovery process so others could learn from it; and to get back in shape so he could return to scuba diving.

Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery is available on January 25, 2017, the one-year anniversary of Douglas’ stress test and beginning his personal journey to return to health.

Throughout his recovery, Douglas wrote a series of columns for the community news section of his local paper and six stories that appeared on ScubaDiving.com. Douglas writes a regular dive safety column for the international magazine.  After six months of work, Douglas was cleared to dive and made a series of scuba dives in Summersville Lake, coming full circle back to where he was first certified.

“My story is unique, and at the same time it isn’t. I wanted to share my experiences because many people out there are denying symptoms and damaging their hearts, right up until they have a heart attack or worse,” Douglas said. “I attribute a lot of my successful recovery to having a specific goal before I left the hospital. I was going to return to diving and that kept me focused.”

Douglas included his own story, along with those of a few friends who had unique experiences with their own heart recoveries. To further illustrate the recovery process, Douglas surveyed more than 100 survivors to learn about their diagnoses, the changes they made in their lives and how their own recoveries progressed.

Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery is for anyone diagnosed with heart disease whether they are treating their condition with diet and medications, received stents to open arteries or have had open-heart surgery.

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Filed Under: Books, Heart Blog, New Releases

Heart Survivor: Coming Soon!

January 16, 2017 By Eric Douglas

heart survivor book coverThriller novel author and documentarian Eric Douglas decided to focus on a personal adventure for his new book Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery.

The book is on pre-order now, but will be available on January 25, 2017 in softcover and Kindle.

January 25 is significant because it is a year to the day from when Douglas failed his stress test and began his person journey through heart surgery and recovery. Looking back over the previous year, he recognized many times that he denied symptoms and ignored the possibility that his heart was in trouble. Following the surgery, Douglas made two promises: to be as public as he could about his own recovery process so others could learn from it; and to get back in shape so he could return to scuba diving.

Throughout his recovery, Douglas wrote a series of columns for the community news section of his local paper and six stories that appeared on ScubaDiving.com. Douglas writes a regular dive safety column for the international magazine.  After six months of work, Douglas was cleared to dive and made a series of scuba dives in Summersville Lake, coming full circle back to where he was first certified.

heart survivor return to diving

“My story is unique, and at the same time it isn’t. I wanted to share my experiences because many people out there are denying symptoms and damaging their hearts, right up until they have a heart attack or worse,” Douglas said. “I attribute a lot of my successful recovery to having a specific goal before I left the hospital. I was going to return to diving and that kept me focused.”

Douglas included his own story, along with those of a couple of friends who had unique experiences with their own heart recoveries. To further illustrate the recovery process, Douglas surveyed more than 100 survivors to learn about their diagnoses, the changes they made in their lives and how their own recoveries progressed.

Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery is for anyone diagnosed with heart disease whether they are treating their condition with diet and medications, received stents to open arteries or have had open-heart surgery.

Douglas also appeared on the syndicated talk radio show ScubaRadio on January 14, 2017 to discuss Heart Survivor with Greg “The Divemaster” Holt. Greg followed Eric down the heart surgery path, but discusses that he felt prepared for the journey after following Eric’s recovery.

https://www.booksbyeric.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SR_1-14-17_Heart-Survivor.mp3

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Filed Under: Adventure, Books, Heart Blog, New Releases

Get out and Walk: For your health

September 7, 2016 By Eric Douglas

For the last seven months I’ve talked a lot about my personal battle with heart disease and my recovery from open-heart surgery. The reason for that is two-fold.

walk for your healthFirst, I wanted anyone else with heart disease to know what I learned (as I learned it) and to know that there is life afterward.

Second, and the more important part, I wanted to help educate everyone else that while heart disease is the #1 killer of both men and women in the United States (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), a lot of it is preventable.

There are things like family history and other factors that are out of our control, but a lot of what causes heart disease is up to us. Quitting smoking, eating more fruits and vegetables and exercising regularly are all really simple things we can do to avoid the pain of open-heart surgery.

And I promise you, the surgery hurts.

This weekend is the Charleston Heart Walk, the main fundraising event in support of the American Heart Association (AHA) of West Virginia. The money raised for the AHA goes to research to help find ways to improve our odds against those risk factors we can’t control, but it also goes to support educational programs to help us all avoid having a talk with a cardiologist. And a surgeon. (They also work to stamp out Stroke as well, the #5 killer in the US.)

I’ll be walking this Saturday. I’m going to try to jog the 5K distance, but we’ll see how that goes. Regardless, I’ll be out there and I think you should, too. If you can’t make the walk, please consider donating to the AHA, either directly or through a walk team. My team is Team Second Chance, so named because I feel like I have a second chance at life now. You can search the Charleston Heart Walk site for my team and donate that way, if you want. I don’t get anything from it. All the money goes to the AHA.

The link for my team on the the Charleston Heart Walk is: www.heart.org/charlestonwvwalk

If you want to join me on the walk/run, please join my team and come on out. I’m getting excited!

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