Health & Wellness
Not the Kind of Heart Throb Taylor Swift Sang About
From a Taylor Swift concert high to a life-threatening low and remarkable recovery, follow Kim Krug's journey and the extraordinary care she received at St. Luke's Hospital.
Pennsburg’s Kim Krug Experienced her highest of highs last May during a Taylor Swift concert at Lincoln Financial Field, swaying to the sounds of her favorite artist and trading bracelets with fellow Swifties.
A week later, she endured the lowest of lows when hours-long chest pains and the feeling of pins and needles sent her to the emergency room at St. Luke’s Upper Bucks Campus.
St. Luke’s cardiologist Marcus A. Averbach, MD, said Kim’s EKG appeared normal, “but her blood tests showed high levels of troponin, indicating she was having a heart attack.”
Kim experienced a non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction (non-STEMI), meaning that the heart’s need for oxygen can’t be met. Kim was transferred by ambulance to St. Luke’s Anderson Campus.
An on-call team led by interventional cardiologist Luis A. Tejada, MD, performed an angioplasty and placed a stent to fix a 100 percent blockage in her left anterior descending artery (LAD), the so-called “Widowmaker” blockage.
“They saved my life,” Kim said. “The second part of the story is that because I waited so long to go in, I had a lot of heart damage.”
With help from Andrea Emery at St. Luke’s Quakertown Campus Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation, Kim found the physical and emotional rehabilitation “absolutely extraordinary!”
Kim fully committed to the rehab process. She changed her diet, quit smoking, exercised, and learned about cardiac risk factor modification. She lost 60 pounds!
That last session with Andrea was something sweet. And Swift. Andrea created an entire Taylor Swift playlist for the final session.
Kim thought she was living her best life at that Taylor Swift concert. Today, she really is.
“None of this would have been possible without the extraordinary care from everyone at St. Luke’s,” Kim said.
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