Just 24-hours before making a presentation at Saturday’s dedication ceremony of the new north tower of Methodist Hospital (Sept. 10), Mayor Gary Kovacic was a patient at the same hospital, having come dangerously close to a serious heart attack or worse.
A day earlier, on Thursday, Kovacic had an emergency procedure to put a stent in one of his three major heart arteries when it was discovered that the Left Anterior Descending (LAD) artery was 90% to 95% blocked. He was released Friday (Sept. 9) after an overnight stay at Methodist, and 24-hours later was back at Methodist for the previously-scheduled dedication, sharing the story and before-and-after angiogram photos of his artery with the VIP crowd.
<Story continues below the following 1 1/2-minute video of the Mayor’s comments and photos at Saturday’s dedication.>
Get the Flash Player to see this content.Kovacic said he had been unusually exhausted after a short back-pack hike with his son and the recent “Cool Breezes” bike ride from Ventura to Santa Barbara and back. But that didn’t spark him to see a doctor or to cancel his plane trip to Texas to see his beloved UCLA Bruins’ opening football game. It wasn’t until his friend Tim Murphy, a former fire chief and current member of the Arcadia Human Resources Commission, strongly suggested he see a cardiologist that Kovacic was ordered to have an immediate angiogram that showed the blockage.
— By Scott Hettrick