HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – \u201cA widowmaker\u201d is a type of heart attack that is extremely life threatening, and Nate, a patient who wished to remain anonymous, almost died from one.<\/p>\n
His family believes that Dr. James Ham, an emergency medicine physician at Straub Benioff Medical Center, saved his life.<\/p>\n
Kelly Golden, the patient\u2019s sister in Missouri, said of Dr. Ham: \u201cWhen you\u2019re gonna be in that high stress of an environment, with people on the worst days of their life, he definitely brings just comfort and peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says in early February, Nate was rushed to Straub Benioff Medical Center\u2019s emergency room with chest pain, where he flatlined three times.<\/p>\n
Golden said the medical team of nurses and physicians, including Dr. Ham, helped to keep Nate alive.<\/p>\n
Dr. Ham said, \u201cHe actually what we call coded en route to the cath (cardiac catheterization) lab and at that point, while we are in motion, we\u2019re able to do CPR. So we had a nurse on top of him as the gurney is rolling doing compressions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Golden added, \u201cDuring that whole ordeal, Dr. Ham was a constant presence within the ER.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nate is expected to recover, but he has no memory of who had helped him.<\/p>\n
In a follow-up exam, he and his parents got to meet the man and the team who saved his life.<\/p>\n
Golden said, \u201cMy mom got to have some great peace and some great closure on these were the people that saved my son\u2019s life, and without Dr. Ham introducing her to those people, she never would have gotten to say thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, Dr. Ham volunteered his skills in Papua New Guinea, a trip that often takes more than 24 hours by air and by land.<\/p>\n
He helped spearhead multiple projects in the area, including teaching police officers first aid, building supply for clean water and bringing prosthetic hands to amputees.<\/p>\n
Golden said, \u201cWhen I think of a health care hero, I think of someone who, it goes beyond a job. It\u2019s a vocation. It\u2019s a calling, and I definitely think Dr. Ham embodies that, totally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Ham was formerly recognized at the Hawaii Healthcare Heroes event, but he humbly says he was just doing his job as part of a bigger, well-trained team.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo I feel like I deserve this award? No. But I\u2019m happy to accept the award based on the hard work of the team and of the organization and of the system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – \u201cA widowmaker\u201d is a type of heart attack that is extremely life threatening, and Nate,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-643597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}