Country star Colt Ford doesn't remember the day he had a life-threatening heart attack. He and his band performed at Whiskey Row, a venue in Gilbert, Arizona, on April 4, 2024, but Ford told CBS News that he has no memory of the show.He also doesn't remember the moments after the show, when he returned to the tour bus and collapsed. "One of my guys just happened to walk back on the bus and find me already slumped over," Ford, a former professional golfer, said. Ford had experienced a massive heart attack.
His bandmates called for help and started performing CPR.First responders took him to an area hospital, where he underwent a 10-hour surgery.
He flat-lined twice, Colt said, and his heart had to be shocked back into beating.After the surgery, he was transferred to the Mayo Clinic, where he was kept in a medically induced coma for eight days.He was also put on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, a form of machine support that helps the heart and lungs. No one, including Ford, had noticed any symptoms of the heart attack.
Ford had undergone a check-up before his tour that found no problems, he said.He had recently lost weight and thought he was in good shape, and he was 53 years old at the time.
His bandmates remembered the night as one of the best shows of their tour, and videos from the night show Ford active on stage. "I woke up eight days later, and I don't remember any of it," Ford, now 54, said."I had no concept of it." Do heart attacks always have symptoms? Heart attacks don't always have symptoms, according to Dr.
Sawella Guseh, a cardiologist at Mass General Brigham who was not involved in Ford's care.The phenomenon hasn't been closely studied, so exact numbers of who does and doesn't have symptoms don't exist, he said, but silent heart attacks do make up a "significant" number of cases.
Some groups are more prone to "silent heart attacks," Guseh said.That includes people with diabetes, who may have nerve damage from hi...