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In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & Chief Executive Bryan Strawser tells a personal story about an experience he had this past week around his Mom’s heart attack and the importance of helping family, friends, and loved ones recognize the signs of cardiac arrest. Related Episodes & Blog Posts Blog Post: Personal Preparedness: Steps You can Take Today to Improve the Safety of Your Family When Disaster Strikes Blog Post: Four steps you can take today to improve your personal preparedness Episode #6 – Personal Preparedness Episode #69: National Preparedness Month Episode #71: Pet Preparedness Episode Transcript Hello, and Welcome to the Managing Uncertainty podcast. This is Bryan Strawser, Principal and Chief Executive here at Bryghtpath. And in this week’s episode, I want to tell a more personal story than I usually talk about here on the podcast with a little bit about an experience I had in this past week. I was awoken last Thursday morning by a phone call from my younger brother. I live in Minnesota, but I grew up about 10 hours from here in rural Indiana, where my parents and my brother, who is about five years younger than I am, reside. And my brother called to tell me that my mother had had a medical emergency and was en route to the hospital in an ambulance. It turned out that my mother had her first heart attack, her first real medical emergency in her 71 years of life. Fortunately, she’s on her way to a full recovery and is doing all of the normal post-cardiac issues and challenges that you need to work through after having a life-threatening medical emergency. Like many women, my mother didn’t recognize that the signs and symptoms that she was experiencing were a serious cardiac issue because she thought of a heart attack as, I’m going to have searing chest pain and pressure. And that, that means I’m having a heart attack, and I should call an ambulance. Instead, she had this enormous shortness of breath that continued to get worse over several hours until she felt like she couldn’t get up off of the couch. She’d actually been up most of the night. Finally called my father on his cell phone. He was asleep at the far end of the house. After having this severe shortness of breath, she never had a feeling of great pressure or any searing chest pain. And we were fortunate that when she awoke my father, who is 74, after several hours of discomfort, that my father recognized the situation for what it was and immediately called 911, which dispatched paramedics. Now, my parents live in very rural Indiana. It was a great place to grow up, in that there was very little crime, and there were plenty of people that cared about you, and a true sense of community. But it also means that you’re a long way from good medical care. At the time that I was growing up there 25 plus years ago, calling EMS meant that you got a basic life support capability, an EMT, two EMTs, and an ambulance. But now, they have paramedics. But it’s still a 12 to 15-minute wait for them to show up. So, as the paramedics arrived, they recognized the situation for what it was. They were out of the house in less than five minutes en route to the emergency room where she received some treatments, an