Rick's Survival Was A Matter Of Medicine. It Was Marrow That Gave Strong Strength.

Rick Strong is pumping iron, and pumping blood, because of modern medicine and a seldom recognized ingredient we all have. Please read this take on the source of life blood.

By Ray Glier

You have to dig into vocabulary to tell Rick Strong’s story. Here are the words I came up with:

Detonation. 
Marrow.
Essentiality.

When he was 61 years old, Rick died for 15 minutes, if you consider your heart stopping for 15 minutes the equivalent of death.

When he collapsed, Strong happened to be on the same tennis court near his home in Westlake, Ohio, with a relentless and highly-skilled cardiologist. Dr. Anthony Vlastaris worked fiercely on Rick's chest to try and restart his heart. When the emergency medical technicians arrived with the defibrillator pads, it took two claps to get Strong’s heart started again.

That was the detonation part of his story.

Marrowis considered our core of existence, the essence of life, or what is referred to as the "seedbed of blood." It is deep inside and responsible for blood cell production. Symbolically, it is key to our mental hard wiring. 

Rick’s marrow showed up after the six grafts (material from his body) that created six bypasses for his heart. Six!

Post-surgery, Strong was receiving signals, especially from inside his own head, that he might be destined to be a “cardiac invalid”, someone who is over-dependent on other people, looking out for the next train wreck inside their body, and whose heart does not function properly.

His marrow rallied him.

“It was like the rug was totally pulled out from under me,” said Rick, 77, a retired trial attorney. “I did not want to accept the fact that I was going to be a cardiac invalid. That's the phrase that came into my mind at the time, soon after my event. No doctor ever said that, but there were signals around me. I was certainly afraid of that.

“I just could not accept that.”

Essentiality came next, It was a compounding of two things.

Strong’s workouts and training created collateral circulation. His capillaries expanded. That was essential partly because grafts can fail and two of his six did fail.

“You develop those (capillaries) by stressing the heart. You know, causing the pump to work harder,” Rick said.

Strong also found Cardiac Athletes, which had members from all over the world. There were annual events, typically running events and Rick did some relays with CA.

“But what really gave me agency was discovering a book by Dr Caldwell Esselstyn that advocated a totally plant-based diet,” Strong said. “And I adopted that, and I still embrace the plant-based diet now 16 years later.”

Strong still plays tennis. He hikes and he is into rucking, which is walking, or hiking, while carrying a weighted backpack, or vest. He’s been on 10k runs, and more.

**

What is important to Rick’s story is that he had injured his knee and stopped running and gained weight before his death event. He still played tennis and he still rode his bike, but Strong was not pushing himself. Instead he was deluding himself. He didn't have the same exertion and ate too many pizzas with double cheese, he said.

Many of us do it. We think we are exercising, but it’s not enough.

And we find out the hard way. It happened to me in 2012  (a stent) and it happened to Rick in 2010 with six bypasses.

When Strong started to run again after the surgery, it was laborious to go a few hundred yards before he had to walk. Rick kept at. What drove him, he said, was a comment his daughter heard in the crowd as he was being wheeled off toward the ambulance.

“That’s the last time we’ll see him out here.”

“Do not get frustrated in the early stages of trying to improve because it starts out with baby steps and it takes time in order to begin to see progress,” Strong said. “But once you see any progress, it's motivating to continue.”

Here is what’s cool:

Rick didn’t just get back his strength, he got back more vitality than he had before the dying event, he said. He rode 73 miles on his 73rd birthday.

Strong rides in competitive bike races. He rode competitively in the National Senior Games and finished back in the pack, but prefers to put it this way: “I won the gold medal in the division for guys who were dead 15 minutes.”

“The doctor that did the CPR on me and saved my life has played tennis next to me as a partner and as an opponent.,” Strong said. “So I think he was quite impressed with the fact that I tend to run around on the tennis court more than most of the guys. The doc is probably 16 or 18 years younger than I am. I've played tennis with and against him for years.”

Of course, Rick’s wife, Linda, played a significant role. The Strong’s kitchen got greener and she encouraged Rick and joined in with most aspects of the plant-based diet.

What is not lost on Strong is his good fortune. He and the doc who saved his life were both substitutes that night on the tennis courts. Neither was supposed to be there for team tennis.

“We weren't scheduled to play, but got called in at the last minute,” Rick said. “So had this happened to me almost anywhere else, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.”

The fact he wasn’t sitting at home, that he was exercising, isn’t luck. Strong’s desire to be physically fit put him in a place to be saved. His marrow did the rest.