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Economic Backbone: Cardiac Care
A Second Chance at Life
Five years ago, part of Roy Reid's heart essentially split open. It changed his life in ways he never could have expected.
One Friday night in 2019, Roy Reid fell asleep on the couch while watching a movie. “At about two in the morning, I wake up with the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life — as if someone had punched a hole through my chest,” Reid says. “I run into the bedroom, wake up my wife and say, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack, we need to get to the emergency room.’”
His wife, Kim, drove him to the nearest hospital — AdventHealth Altamonte Springs, north of Orlando. “As they put me up on the table, one of the nurses recognizes that I have no feeling in my arms and legs, which is a sign of an acute aortic dissection,” says Reid, 58, a longtime Central Florida communications professional. “What’s essentially happening is my heart is splitting open.”
According to the National Institutes of Health, an acute aortic dissection is “an infrequent but catastrophic disorder.” It’s also called an “exploding heart.” It happens when there’s a tear in the wall of the aorta, the major artery carrying blood out of the heart.
Reid was airlifted to AdventHealth Orlando for surgery in the middle of the night. “They had to replace the entire upper arch of my aorta, which took six hours of open-heart surgery,” Reid says. “When they were done, there was a lot of concern that there was so much oxygen lost that I’d likely have permanent brain damage and would require nursing care for the rest of my life.”
After being in a coma for a week, Reid woke with all his faculties intact. And his brush with death has changed his life. “My recovery has gone incredibly well — miraculous in many ways,” he says. “Today is day 1,648 of my second life.”
He dropped 40 pounds. He exercises every day and does 5K races and half marathons at a brisk walking pace. He carves out time for quiet prayer and meditation. He tries to see his four adult children most Sundays. And he makes sure to get enough sleep. “My routines are very different now — the food I eat, how I treat my body,” he says.
A former communications director for AdventHealth, Reid now works as a counselor, consultant and executive coach for business leaders and organizations. He’s the co-creator of The Trust Transformation, a program designed to improve results by improving relationships through an intentional focus on earning, cultivating and restoring trust.
Today Reid says he treats every day as a gift. In a way, he’s grateful for his near-death experience.
“As counterintuitive as it sounds, it was the best thing that could have happened to me,” he says. “You don’t get to face your mortality like that without it changing you. It’s an awakening in so many ways. You’re able to see life through the lens of a second chance.”
