SAN ANTONIO – Gregg Bell is perhaps the last person you’d expect to have a heart attack.
He’s a personal fitness trainer who owns his own gym, Nexxt Fit, and is a former professional triathlete.
So when he heard paramedics say, “he’s having a heart attack,” while he was lying on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, Bell asked who they were talking about.
“I went from feeling like, you know, a world-class cyclist to, ‘Oh my gosh, I gotta take a nap,’” Bell recalled.
He was cycling through the King William neighborhood when he stopped in a patch of grass to lie down.
After Bell propped his bike up next to a tree near the intersection of Beauregard and King William streets, he fell backward.
“That’s when the couple was walking down the street, said, ‘Do you need help?’ I don’t even remember seeing them,” he said.
The woman in that couple would later tell him he stared at her with his eyes wide open for two minutes, unresponsive. So she called 911.
Bell believes the quick thinking of the man and woman, and their willingness to help, saved his life that day in July.
“If I would have stayed here just 10 more minutes, that’s when my heart stopped,” he said. “The right side was beating so hard, it started fibrillating; it stopped. But I was already at the hospital, already strapped up. They shocked me back, unplugged the blockage, and I’m here.”
Bell doesn’t remember much about his helpers, other than the blue Tesla they were driving. He hopes someone will see his story and help connect him with the couple so he can thank them personally.
Bell also hopes his story serves as a wake-up call for others to pay attention to their heart health and family history.
“I had a few warning signs that week,” he said.
His blood pressure had been higher than normal in the days before his heart attack, but Bell blew it off.
He also urges others to consider their own family history.
Bell has a history of heart problems that he calls “kind of a demon” that motivated him to stay in shape.
“But I should have rested more,” he said. “Yeah, I exercised enough, but I didn’t rest enough. And so people need to know their family history; they need to check the blood pressure.”
Bell spent a week in the hospital and has slowed down his pace in life.
“Seven days in the hospital changes your life,” he said.
If you know anything about that hero couple who helped save Bell, reach out to Myra Arthur at marthur@ksat.com.
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