Jeff Schoen is no stranger to St. Tammany Health System.
He’s lived in Covington his whole life. His family has been on the Northshore for some 150 years. As a managing partner in the local Jones Fussell law firm, he has even done legal work for the health system.
So, when the then-70-year-old woke up at 5:30 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving 2022 with severe chest pains – “like an LSU linebacker was just pushing down with his foot on my chest” – he knew what to do.
Rather than driving himself to the hospital, which experts strongly advise against, he alerted his wife, who loaded him into the car.
“And off we went to St. Tammany, which has always been my hospital of choice for a lifetime when I needed some type of medical care and help,” he said.
There, he knew, he would get world-class healthcare upon his arrival.
What he didn’t expect was a life-changing experience.
“(It) was very remarkable and quite frankly saved my life – and continues to inspire me every day to be maybe a better patient, and post-patient, than I would be otherwise,” the LSU die-hard said in February, surrounded by a mini-museum of Tigers memorabilia in his Covington-area office.
“It helped me rehab my heart,” he added, “but it also helped me rehab my soul.”
Only the beginning
When Mr. Schoen arrived at the hospital, he said, two hospital staffers were waiting for him with a wheelchair.
Industry standards push hospitals to have chest-pain patients hooked up to an EKG machine, measuring their heart rhythm, in fewer than 10 minutes after their arrival. St. Tammany Parish Hospital averages fewer than four minutes.
In Mr. Schoen’s case, it was even quicker.
“Once I identified myself upon exiting the vehicle, I’m immediately in the wheelchair, off to triage,” he said. “I mean, these things happened immediately.”
After his care provider confirmed he was, indeed, having a heart attack, Mr. Schoen soon found himself in the hospital’s heart catheterization lab, undergoing a procedure to address multiple blockages.
Thankfully, everything went well, and he was soon sent home to begin his recovery.
And that’s where his personal transformation really started.
With the scary part over and Mr. Schoen out of the woods medically speaking, he was ready to get back to his busy schedule.
“I’m sort of thinking you go back to life now and pick up where you left off,” he said.
But that’s not how it works.