By Dennis Grover

One evening in August of 1996, I sat down to watch TV, broke out in a soaking sweat, became nauseated and violently ill, and couldn’t breathe.  It felt as if someone had just dropped an anvil on my chest and left arm.  All my bodily functions had suddenly turned on me.

Realizing this was more than the usual reaction to TV sitcoms, I headed for the VA hospital.  When I arrived at the Emergency Room, I was in bad shape.  First they made sure they had a social security number for me and then they weighed me (?).  I was told to lie down in a treatment room, which quickly filled with doctors and technicians hustling around with their equipment.  At this point, I died and experienced four minutes of total ecstasy, but that’s another story for later.  The next thing I remember was looking up into a half dozen faces of people wiping their brows and saying, “Wow, that was close.  We thought we’d lost you.”

Finally stabilized, I was taken to Intensive Care, where I drifted in and out of consciousness, only remembering family and nurses talking and prodding.  The next morning, several doctors came in and told me that I had experienced quite a serious “event.”  I said that an event was something you bought a ticket for and went to for entertainment.  What I had just gone through didn’t seem much like an event. They then said I had a “cardiac event.”  Still not satisfied, I continued probing for the actual layman’s term, “heart attack.”  Did I have one or not?  After a brief huddle, they agreed to call it what it was, but said that particular term usually proved upsetting to the patient.  No kidding!

I felt much better now, except for a badly bruised chest where they had obviously beat me with a blunt instrument to make me breathe, and two burns from their electric paddles, which I assume was the medical equivalent of a jump start.  I’m not saying that what they did was wrong — I’m saying that this was the only pain I had.  They did save my life.

After two days in the hospital in Reno, Nevada, it was decided that I would be transferred to the VA medical facility in San Francisco.  They put me on a private jet with my own nurse and a paramedic.  The next day in San Francisco, they gave me a heart catheterization.  This used to be called an angiogram, and if you ever get a chance to have one yourself, ask questions first.

The next morning, two doctors and six medical students with their eight clipboards surrounded my bed.  The doctors told me I had a 90 percent blockage in one artery, and two others were in pretty sad shape.  They then announced that since my life expectancy was grim, they scheduled me for a “procedure” the next morning and wanted me to sign some “no-matter-what-happens” documents.

When it was my turn to talk, I first asked, “Is this procedure of yours anything like bypass surgery?  After another explanation of how certain terms might upset the patient, they admitted that the two were the same.  I then asked if their procedure involved cutting open my chest, spreading my rib cage with a mini version of the “jaws of life,” taking a dozen inches of vein from my leg, renaming it an artery, and then grafting it around the clogged arteries to my heart?  After telling me my description was a bit crude, they agreed that I was basically correct.

Now some more questions.  “First of all, you people gave me a pamphlet that said I had 60,000 miles or some ridiculous amount of arteries, veins, and capillaries.  So if the 12 inches around my heart are clogged, what about the rest of them?  Aren’t they clogged, too?

“Secondly, doesn’t that vein in my leg have a function, or is it a spare?”

I had more questions, but at this point they hushed me up while they got the med students away from me.

For many years I had read about great things that are accomplished with natural medicine, and especially in this case, chelation therapy.  I knew I had a serious decision to make, and quickly, because the surgeons were now standing by my bed thinking that I’m a real nut case.  I also had my family wanting me to do what the doctors say.  I took this opportunity to find out for myself what alternative medicine might do for me.  After all, the only thing at stake here was my life, so I told them no to their “procedure.”

They made a couple of comments about my deficient mental capacity and told me to give them a call when I was ready to do the “right thing.”  That afternoon, I was moved from Intensive Care to a ward of veterans in various stages of “no-hope” conditions, and then released the next day in San Francisco.  It was interesting to me that they flew me there in a private jet, but wouldn’t give me a bus ticket home.

At this point, I have to say that the VA hospitals and staff treated me with genuine concern, did what they are trained to do, and honored my decision to not go under their knife.  In fact, they even gave approving smiles as veterans circulated a petition to appoint Dr. Kevorkian as White House physician.  Several members of the staff even admitted that they were only schooled in treating symptoms and never learned preventive medicine or alternative treatments.

Finally back home, I consulted with respected homeopathic doctors.  They recommended immediate chelation, and since there is no financial help for this treatment, I started on the less-expensive oral chelation capsules.  I supplemented them with a balanced dose of vitamins and minerals along with changing my lifestyle from the high stress of trying to “get everything done right now to make everyone happy” to that of “I’ll get done what I can, when I can, and those who don’t approve can romance my north end as I head south.”  I now eat healthy foods, very little red meat, and completely cut out the “heart attack in a sack” from drive-throughs.

It’s now been nine years since my “event,” and with chelation and the other changes in my lifestyle, I’m very much alive 108 months past the time I was scheduled to die.  I’m 61 now, and all my bodily functions that had become sluggish (or even disappeared) have come back strong, stand up, poke out straight, and I feel younger every day.

I’m not telling you this to make light of a heart attack;  believe me, it’s a very serious situation.  It’s also the “final straw” for your body, which has undoubtedly been giving you subtle hints all along that it needs some preventive maintenance.  Open your eyes to what’s going on with your body and mind.  Relieve the stress, and realize that when you stand up straight and can’t see your belt buckle without a mirror, you could be in for a nasty surprise.  The time to investigate nutrition and treat your body to natural cures such as chelation is before your heart explodes, not after.  Take it from someone who has been there, done that.  Do for your body as I tell you from my experience — don’t copy my “event” from ignorance.

By the way, at my checkup last month I was told by my cardiologist to keep doing whatever I’m doing, because my recovery and present health condition are excellent.

©  Copyright Dennis Grover, 2007.  Used by permission.