On Thursday 27 January, Geir Arne Dale drove home to his girlfriend Anne Gro Berge in Porsgrunn, after several days away from work as a construction worker.
The 55-year-old noticed that he was unusually tired when he sat behind the wheel. For a long time he had felt a stiff neck and pain in his arms.
Still, he took the extra hour in the car to visit Berge. Dale himself lives on Akkerhaugen in Central Telemark.
– I was in Porsgrunn until Friday morning. When she went to work, I started the car trip home to Akkerhaugen. The plan was to return to his girlfriend in the evening, the 55-year-old explains to Dagbladet.
But around Friday afternoon, Dale had to announce that he could not bear to return to Porsgrunn. He had chest pains.
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– It felt like the whole chest was on its way out of the body. It was insanely painful. I had been stiff in the neck, but I was sure it was because I had been wrong.
The case was first mentioned in Bø Blad.
Ignored the symptoms
The boyfriend was worried and asked him to call the emergency room, but Dale thought the chest discomfort was due to air pain.
– I have had air pain before, and it felt very similar. I was pretty sure that was it.
He spent Friday night at home on the couch, and when he woke up Saturday morning, the pain was gone.
He lay in bed and stated that the pains the day before must have been air pain.
New details announced
Dale got up and started trudging around the house – and suddenly the pain came back.
He called his girlfriend, who in turn asked him urgently to call the emergency room.
The telemarking itself had plans to contact the GP next Monday, but he begged as a girlfriend.
At ten o’clock on Saturday morning, Dale dialed the number he had long postponed.
– Only a few minutes after I hung up, the ambulance was in the courtyard, he explains.
Hit and killed in the pram
– Extremely scared
The health personnel quickly found out that the 55-year-old’s pain in his neck, arms and chest came from a heart attack.
The telemarking was rushed off in an ambulance. The plan was to drive from Akkerhaug to Ullevål University Hospital in Oslo, a drive of about two hours.
But Dale had the knife to his throat. They were not going to make it.
In Kongsberg, the 55-year-old was rushed to an ambulance helicopter. Dale was almost flown straight into the operating table.
The most common cause of a heart attack is a blood clot in the coronary arteries that lies outside the heart, and carries blood into the heart muscle itself. General practitioner Brynjulf Barexstein and specialist Olaf Rødevand explain more about symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. Video: Lommelegen.no
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– I was extremely scared. And I was so embarrassed and I felt really stupid. Had I only called the emergency room that Thursday, it would not have gone that far.
It was found that one of the years into the heart was completely tight. The surgeon entered with a wire in Dale’s wrist, and followed the blood vessel up his arm and into his heart.
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A metal stent was inserted to keep the clogged blood vessel open.
Stent treatment is treatment with the insertion of a stent to keep a narrow portion of the blood vessel or hollow organ open. Blood vessel stents are inserted with catheter technique and X-ray guidance, according to Large medical encyclopedia.
Dale was awake throughout the process, and watched in awe on the X-ray screen. And as soon as the blood vessel opened, the pain in the neck and arms disappeared in an instant.
– I called the emergency room at ten in the morning. If I had called ten in the evening, it would have been a different color on the car that picked me up, he says, aiming for a funeral car.
X-RAY: Geir Arne Dale watched on screen while the surgeon inserted a stent. Photo: Private
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Warns others
Now Dale wants to warn other men against ignoring serious symptoms. His own case was so frightening that he therefore wants to tell about the horror experience.
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– We sit at home and think we have a bearing on health. That pain passes by itself. But that’s not always the case. People do not have to wait with that phone to the emergency room. There are trained health personnel all over Norway waiting for such telephones.
– It is better to call the emergency room and hang up once too much, than to hang up too well.
He himself thinks it is a typical “man thing”. But it’s not tough to be dead, Dale emphasizes.
– We should not call the doctor because we are tough. A heart attack does not have to be as serious as in my case, if it is detected early enough. It’s scary how close I was to the fatal.
– Calling early is vital.
Without pressure from her boyfriend, Dale is sure it would have been over and out.
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According to National Association for Heart and Lung Disease (LHL) is a heart attack caused by a sudden blockage of a blood vessel that nourishes the heart muscle (crane artery).
If the heart muscle does not get blood, and thus lacks oxygen for a few minutes, it begins to take damage.
If a large part of the heart muscle is damaged, the heart is not able to pump as well as before. The condition is called acute heart failure, and a heart attack can in the worst case develop into cardiac arrest, writes LHL.
Received a heart injury
After the operation at Ullevål, the 55-year-old was sent to Notodden for observation. Three days after he feared for his own life in the air ambulance, he was home at Akkerhaug again.
– The health personnel at Ullevål and Notodden were absolutely exceptional. They really are the heroes of society, he brags.
He is now on sick leave for six weeks. But the late phone call to the emergency room has left its mark on my heart.
– I have had an injury to my heart, but with the right medication it will work out. It is simply a consequence I have to take, as I was so late in dialing the emergency room number.
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Dale feels awake and healthy – better than he has felt in a whole year. But it lacks fitness.
– If I go up a small hill, I get tired right away. So I have to train a little, but it should go well.
In 2020, 13,460 people with acute myocardial infarction have been registered in Norway. Of these, 11,282 were new cases. 64 percent of these cases were men, according to National Institute of Public Health (NIPH).
2,178 people were previously registered with a heart attack.
Strong encouragement
In private, the 55-year-old is a musician and released in 2020 his first solo album as “The Norseman Company”, after several years as a drummer and songwriter in the rock band Humbucker.
He was therefore terrified that he would have to put the drumsticks on the shelf after the operation.
ROCKER: Geir Arne Dale is a musician alongside his job as a construction worker. Photo: Private
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– The first thing I asked the doctor was if I could play again. And he said it was very useful training, and just an advantage. So now I actually have a doctor’s certificate that I have to play drums, the musician smiles.
Now he hopes that as many people as possible will learn from his story.
– It ended well this time, but it was just luck. If this article can make one person call earlier, and save their own life, then it’s worth it.
– Do not sit at home and think you have a clue. Do not be tough. Call the emergency room.
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