The following is an article from the Kokomo Perspective about PDK brother Jeff Haworth of Beta Nu. It was submitted by National President Bruce Smith.
Spring break started off on the right foot for the local president of AFSCME and his wife as they left for a “bucket list” vacation that began in Las Vegas and was supposed to end with a cruise in the Pacific Ocean.
But when Jeff Haworth suffered a heart attack partway through the vacation, new plans were created for him and Sheila, which included a multi-day stay in an intensive care unit in a hospital in Mexico. “I was scared. I was very scared. I didn’t know if that was the end or what kind of treatment I was going to get,” said Haworth, 55.
The couple began their dream vacation in Las Vegas, visiting with longtime friends, before flying to Long Beach, Calif., to visit with family. From there, they left on a cruise, and everything was going well until two days in. Haworth began feeling ill and was vomiting heavily, but the pair had a catamaran excursion planned that they previously had booked through the tour company Pronatours. Sheila suggested Haworth stay with the ship and skip the excursion, but he wanted to go.
The excursion took the group to an island where Haworth continued vomiting. He began having slight chest pain, he said, but he and Sheila considered that it could be from all the retching. Regardless, Sheila checked with a woman from Pronatours, Lety Gomez, and asked if Haworth could leave with one of the other tour groups that was coming and going, as he wasn’t feeling well, and Sheila would finish out the excursion Another woman with the tour company, Lety Osuna, assured Sheila that they would get him back to the ship. “It never entered my mind that he was having a heart attack,” said Sheila.
On the way back, Haworth told the woman he was with that he thought he was having a heart attack, so she radioed ahead to a harbor doctor in Mazatlán, Mexico, and took him there instead of to the ship. When they arrived, the doctor was waiting on Haworth. He did an EKG and determined that Haworth was, in fact, having a heart attack. He administered nitro and told Haworth that he had to call an ambulance.
Haworth wanted to wait for Sheila, but the doctor told him that if he waited he would die. There were three hospitals in Mazatlán, a city of 750,000 people, and the Haworths said they were fortunate that the closest hospital had the city’s only cardiologists. And it was a state-of-the-art hospital that was only three years old, Hospital Marina Mazatlán.
Around the time Haworth arrived at the hospital, Sheila’s excursion was cut short. She said the tour guides claimed the water was changing and that they needed to head back to the ship. When she arrived back on land, Osuna was waiting for her. She told Sheila that her husband had a heart attack, and they needed to go to the hospital immediately. “I’m bawling. I’m scared to death,” Sheila said.
At the hospital, Sheila found Haworth lying in a hospital bed and described him as looking completely gray. The doctors told her not to talk to him, as they didn’t want him trying to talk back. They explained that Haworth’s main artery was clogged, and he needed a stint. They also needed his insurance card, which was back on the ship.“I’m going, ‘This is crazy.’ I don’t have the insurance card. We didn’t have passports. You don’t need them when you leave and come back through the U.S., so that’s going through my head. I’m saying, ‘Oh my god, how are we going to get out of here?’” she said. However, Osuna arranged for Sheila to get back to the ship to get her belongings and insurance card and assured her that everything would be fine.
When she returned to the hospital, Sheila asked how the procedure went, and she was told the doctors hadn’t done it yet because they needed proof of insurance. The hospital employees told her they could expedite the insurance, but it still would be the next day before they could do the procedure. Sheila, who had a heart attack three years ago, waited 24 hours before she had her procedure, she said, so she said she told herself that everything would be fine if they could do it for her husband the next day. Still, Sheila was panicked, as she wasn’t sure the insurance would be accepted.
Osuna, who still was with Sheila, called her boss, according to Haworth, and Pronatours guaranteed the company would cover the cost of the procedure if the insurance didn’t go through. “I kept saying, ‘You are my angels,’” she said about Osuna and Gomez. The insurance did go through, and Haworth had a stint put in the next day, reopening his main artery. The doctors showed Sheila images of the reopened artery, and she said it went from looking like a toothpick to a straw. “Then I knew he was going to be OK,” she said.
Still, doctors required Haworth to spend two days in the intensive care unit and two days in a regular room, and he had to wait 10 days until they would clear him to fly back home. Hospital officials let Sheila sleep in one of the hospital rooms until the hospital got too busy, and then they moved her to the waiting room. Osuna, one step ahead of Sheila, arranged for a room for her at one of the all-inclusive El Cid resort properties, which the company comped, so she wouldn’t have to sleep in the waiting room, and moved her there.
Once Haworth was released from the hospital, he spent the remaining days at theluxury resort with Sheila, where they said they were treated better than they could have imagined, both at the resort and at the hospital. “The harbor doctor, the ER doctor, the head of the hospital, the cardiologists, from the time he got there until he got his procedure, none of them left. They stayed right there. It was unbelievable the treatment he got and the treatment I got,” she said.
Along the way, Osuna made sure Sheila got everywhere she needed to go and helped her secure the documents she needed to get back home, including passports. A consulate official even went to the hospital to take Haworth’s photo while he was lying in his hospital bed so the passports could be secured quickly. Sheila said she eventually asked Osuna why she was going above and beyond to care for her, and she said she was told, “Because that’s what we do, and it’s part of my job. And I love my job”. “We got to be really close because she took me to do everything,” she said. Sheila said if they hadn’t booked with Pronatours and had the assistance of Osuna and Gomez, they didn’t know what they would have done.
The last few days at the resort, when Haworth was feeling better, they were able to continue out their bucket list vacation as tourists, and Osuna and Gomez were happy to play their parts. They took the pair on a tour through the old city of Mazatlán, and Sheila said she fell in love with it. The couple said they also were grateful to their friends and family back in the states, who arranged for their return flight. Haworth had three pieces of wisdom for those traveling overseas: always take a passport, consider international insurance, and, for those over age 40, have a heart scan.
“I feel like I’m one of the luckiest men on earth that I’m still here. A higher power was looking over me because I’m not finished. I’m blessed. Scary turned into fun because it was scary. It was fun, scary, fun. And that’s how it ended,” Haworth said.
The Haworths already are planning a trip to return to Mazatlán next spring.