After working in construction for more than 20 years, Brett Faucett knows all about the right building blocks. Piece by piece, a building comes together, but if one brick falls out of line, the whole system can crumble.
That’s why Brett knew something was wrong when the numbness started in his left arm. It came and went several times before he ended up behind the wheel of his car.
Sitting at an intersection, Brett was at a crossroads. He could turn right, attend his out-of-town business meeting, and ignore the sinking feeling inside. Or he could turn left and drive straight to the Emergency Department at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital.
“It’s really hard when you plan on going to work and you know people are counting on you. It’s hard to make that left turn and listen to your body.”
Brett took a deep breath and turned the wheel toward the hospital, forever changing the course of his life.
BrettCare
Published on February 20, 2020
Last updated 03:48 PM October 31, 2022
From diagnosis to treatment, Brett received cutting-edge cardiac care that saved his life, all from one health system, mere miles from his home.
All heart attacks can be deadly, but a widowmaker heart attack is particularly dangerous. In Brett’s case, we had to act quickly to restore blood flow and prevent any damage to his heart.
- Dr. Salvatore Mannino
Wellstar Cardiologist
Listen to Brett's Story
In the nick of time
Though he didn’t know it, Brett was just minutes away from death when he arrived at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital. After a flurry of tests, Dr. Salvatore Mannino discovered Brett was having a “widowmaker” heart attack with a 99.9% blockage.
“All heart attacks can be deadly, but a widowmaker heart attack is particularly dangerous,” explained Dr. Mannino. A widowmaker heart attack occurs when the left anterior descending (LAD) artery, which supplies blood to the front part of the heart, is blocked. “In Brett’s case, we had to act quickly to restore blood flow and prevent any damage to his heart.”
“When you’re 39 years old, you would never think, 'Man, I'm going to be dealing with a heart attack,'” Brett said. “When you're in a situation like that, your world is flipped upside down.”
From the technicians to the physicians, the Wellstar Medical Staff was there to offer support and reassurance every step of the way.
“They did an amazing job of just calming me down, letting me know what was going on, letting me know what my future looked like,” Brett remembered.
For this father of two, his treatment at Wellstar made all the difference. Less than 24 hours later, Brett was released from the hospital with no heart damage, and back home with his wife and kids.
“My family has a dad and a husband because of Wellstar,” Brett stressed. “As much as it’s a shock to the person that has the heart attack, it’s an even bigger shock for the family because they’re the ones that could have been left behind.”
Following his release, Brett went to Wellstar Cobb Hospital for cardiac rehabilitation, a medically supervised education, lifestyle and exercise program for patients with cardiac-related illnesses like heart attacks.
After completing the program, Brett was able to move forward without missing a beat.
Listening to your body
A few years later, Brett sat on an airplane heading to Atlanta from a business trip. As the tires lifted from the ground, he broke out in a cold sweat and felt a nagging tightness in his chest.
“It felt like I maybe had bronchitis, just a little tightness. It was a completely different feeling than my first heart issue,” Brett recounted.
Even though he was more than 30,000 feet in the air, Brett knew he had to do something. After notifying the flight attendant of the situation, an EMS team was brought on the tarmac at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. As soon as the plane touched down, Brett was rushed through downtown to Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center.
“When you have a second heart attack, you just don’t even know what to do,” Brett said, describing the intensity of the situation. “You don’t know how to even process that.”
After undergoing tests in the cardiac catheterization (cath) lab, Dr. Paul Douglass discovered a 40% blockage in a vessel that ran across the front of Brett’s heart. The cardiologist cleared the blockage immediately.
“It turns out Mr. Faucett had a new lesion that caused his second heart attack. Luckily, this time his artery didn’t require a stent.” Dr. Douglass recalled, noting that a stent helps prop the artery open, decreasing its chance of narrowing again. “However, to prevent a heart attack in the future, he was placed on a strict diet and aerobic exercise plan.”
After two days in the ICU, Brett was feeling like himself again.
During it all, Brett fondly remembers how Dr. Douglass treated him throughout the process. “He took a lot of time with me explaining everything. He made me feel at ease and helped me understand what was going on.”
To this day, Brett still regularly sees Dr. Douglass for any of his cardiovascular needs.
“Dr. Douglass walks the walk. Literally.” He laughed, remembering how he once called the cardiologist and caught him on the treadmill.
But Dr. Douglass wasn’t the only one helping Brett during his recovery.
“Caring for patients is a team effort with both the physician and the family,” Dr. Douglass said about Brett’s health journey. “His wife and children were instrumental in his recovery. They helped cheer him on through cardiac rehabilitation so he could achieve his health goals.”
Expert heart care
From diagnosis to treatment, Brett received cutting-edge cardiac care that saved his life, all from one health system, mere miles from his home. Brett and his entire family continue their wellness journey with Wellstar, whether that’s making sure he stays healthy or scheduling routine check-ups for his two kids at Acworth Health Park.
“Wellstar covers all my family's health needs,” Brett said about the comprehensive care he and his family have received. “The way Wellstar has taken care of us is world-class. We feel like we’re the only patients they have.”
One of the biggest lessons Brett has learned is to listen to his body as he gets older. “When you’re younger you feel like you’re bulletproof, and nothing could ever happen to you. One thing I would advise is making sure that all men of all ages have some kind of health screening at least once a year.”
Brett knows his cardiac episodes are just a couple of chapters in his health story. To keep making progress, he must continue to choose to live a healthy lifestyle and be an active participant in his wellness. But with Wellstar, he doesn’t have to do it alone.
“Everyone has a health story that gets written,” Brett said. “And there is no other place that I would want my story written than at Wellstar.”
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Wellstar Kennestone Achieves Elite National Recognition in Cardiothoracic Surgery
Highlights
Stroke prevention and the future of stroke care
This article was originally published on
Atlanta Business Chronicle on May 19, 2023.
Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. The Georgia Department of Public Health reports the state had the 12th highest stroke death rate in the country. Georgia is also part of the “stroke belt,” an area of the southeastern United States with stroke death rates 30% higher than the rest of the nation.
As the leading — but preventable — cause of disability, stroke can happen at any age.
Stroke is a medical emergency, meaning the blood flow to an area of the brain is cut off, depriving brain tissue of oxygen and nutrients. When this happens, brain cells start to die and abilities controlled by that area of the brain, such as speech or muscle control, are lost.
New drugs and new advanced treatments — such as the Tigertriever and Artemis — are helping reduce the death and disability impact of stroke, as well as comprehensive care programs and innovative hospital partnerships that expand stroke services into rural areas.
Physicians from Wellstar Health System and the CEO of a hospital in northeast Georgia joined Atlanta Business Chronicle to discuss stroke prevention and the future of stroke care.
Panelists & moderator
- Dr. Rishi Gupta, Endovascular Neurologist and Co-Medical Director of Neuro Care
- Dr. Ashis Tayal, Vascular Neurologist, Wellstar, Director of Neuro Care Network
- Van Loskoski, CEO, Stephens County Hospital
- David Rubinger, Market President & Publisher, Atlanta Business Chronicle; Moderator
What is stroke, screening and secondary prevention
David Rubinger: Dr. Tayal, set the stage for us about the definition of stroke.
Dr. Ashis Tayal: A stroke is a sudden injury of the brain due to blockage or rupture of an artery in the brain. Injuries to the brain and disability can vary significantly.
The most common, ischemic stroke injury, is due to obstruction of an artery that causes a loss of blood flow to a critical part of the brain which damages the brain rapidly.
The other type of stroke is hemorrhagic stroke, where there’s a rupture of an artery, bleeding into the brain, or the surfaces of the brain, and that is called an intracerebral hemorrhage or a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
Rubinger: I think Americans have become a little better educated as to who’s at risk for stroke, but why don’t you walk us through that. Who would be a potential stroke candidate?
Tayal: High blood pressure, or hypertension, is the most common risk factor for both ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes. High blood pressure is an extremely common but controllable condition. Almost 80% of people have hypertension as they’re getting older.
Other risk factors include diabetes associated with elevated blood sugars causing accelerated blockage of arteries and high cholesterol, which can be related to diet and genetics.
Atrial fibrillation, a common heart arrhythmia that occurs as people get older, also places people at risk for the most severe and disabling types of strokes. And plaque buildup in specific arteries of the neck and brain also leads to an increased risk of stroke.
Smoking is another risk factor. Many adults still smoke despite a lot of progress in stroke treatment, and smoking puts people at risk for different types of stroke.
Rubinger: What about atmospheric things like stress and other areas like that? How does that play into it? Or do those things manifest themselves because of the other underlying physical conditions?
Tayal: I don’t view stress, in and of itself, as a risk factor for stroke. I think that’s more related to people’s environments and their own personalities and how they respond to stress. I do think people who are under undue stress can have poor lifestyle habits, and those poor lifestyle habits, whether poor eating habits, smoking, weight gain or lack of exercise, can lead to conditions that increase the risk for stroke.
Rubinger: So how is the healthcare system doing treating strokes? Do you believe that what’s going on at the primary care provider’s office is helping or do we have a way to go?
Tayal: In the United States, preventive care has improved the treatment of risk factors that lead to stroke, but communities must maintain routine checkups as many of the risk factors are silent.
There are improved treatments for hypertension, more aggressive treatment for diabetes, and more efforts at smoking cessation. Just the fact that we treat hypertension better than we did a generation ago has had a great impact on lowering the prevalence of stroke.
That being said, some of the most exciting work on stroke has often been done in the area of acute treatment of stroke with clot-busting drugs, catheter-based treatments and medications to protect the brain during an acute injury.
Rubinger: Has pharmacology gotten better in terms of the hypertension medicines that are out there? Have anti-cholesterol medicines improved in recent years?
Tayal: In the past, healthcare providers were often undertreating people with hyperlipidemia — high cholesterol — and not fully appreciating the benefits of significant reductions in cholesterol levels. For example, we’ve learned that driving cholesterol down into much lower ranges under 55 mg/dL can benefit our patients who have vascular disease as a cause for their stroke.
In the fight against high cholesterol, newer medications that prevent the absorption of cholesterol are now available. Recent developments have led to the discovery of a new underutilized class of drugs called PCSK-9 inhibitors that are highly effective.
Newsroom
Wellstar Proposes New Acworth Area Hospital To Meet Community Need
To address the growing need for hospital beds in Acworth and the surrounding areas, Wellstar Health System is proposing to build a new 230-bed hospital, filing its Letter of Intent with the Georgia Department of Community Health. A Letter of Intent is the first step in the process to obtain a Certificate of Need for a new hospital.
The new hospital would be located on Cobb Parkway across from the Wellstar Acworth Health Park. Wellstar’s long history of service to this community makes it the ideal partner to continue to meet the area's growing healthcare needs. The project will be supported by Wellstar Health System resources, including Wellstar Kennestone Regional Medical Center and Wellstar Paulding Medical Center, and numerous primary, urgent and specialty care locations, which will further enable the project to provide high-quality care in an integrated, coordinated and efficient manner.
Wellstar will file a detailed Certificate of Need application on or before June 23, 2025, that will include architectural renderings and how the hospital would address the community’s health and wellness needs.
“Wellstar is improving access to care, and this new hospital is the latest in a series of projects that do just that,” said Candice L. Saunders, president and CEO of Wellstar Health System. “The area is growing so much that even when our new tower at Wellstar Kennestone opens next year, the region will need more hospital beds. A new hospital in Acworth would fill a crucial need for the region’s medical care.”
Wellstar is improving access to care for communities across Georgia through more than $1.4 billion in major projects, including:
- Expanding Wellstar Kennestone with a new 200-plus bed tower for additional specialty care,
- Expanding Wellstar Paulding with a new 56-bed tower and parking deck to meet growing community need,
- Adding a new oncology center to Wellstar Spalding Medical Center to help keep cancer care local,
- Committing to upgrading and expanding facilities in the Augusta area, including building a new 100-bed hospital and medical office building in Columbia County for the largest county in Georgia without its own hospital,
- Adding primary care, pediatric, urgent care and specialty services in the communities Wellstar serves, and
- Partnering with the Augusta University Medical College of Georgia Center for Digital Health to provide rural hospitals with access to specialty care.
The new hospital would be part of a Wellstar system that provides more than $1 billion each year in charity and uncompensated care—more than any health system in Georgia. Wellstar is also a leader in medical education through its partnerships with academic institutions, accelerates healthcare technology and innovation, and is recognized by Fortune magazine as one of the 100 Best Places to Work in America.
“Access to healthcare has been expanding throughout Cobb County, but we still have an unmet need for hospital beds in the northern portion of our county,” said Lisa Cupid, chairwoman of the Cobb County Board of Commissioners. “Wellstar is deeply committed to our region, and we’re grateful that they recognized this need and are stepping forward with a solution.”
“Acworth’s population grew fivefold in ten years, and we continue to attract people who want to live and work in our area,” said Tommy Allegood, mayor for the City of Acworth. “The City of Acworth has been expanding our critical infrastructure and creating a place where families will want to stay for generations. A hospital would be extremely beneficial to our community, and we appreciate Wellstar’s willingness to meet our need.”
Wellstar is headquartered in Cobb County and is deeply involved in the area, tracing its heritage to 1950 when Kennestone Hospital opened. In keeping with its community roots, Wellstar will establish a community advisory council to honor every voice throughout the Certificate of Need process.
“My patients are from all walks of life, but they share a desire for a hospital that’s closer to home, especially those who have chronic conditions or are elderly,” said Dr. Michaele Brown, a Wellstar primary care doctor in Acworth. “We live in a vibrant, growing area. Our patients’ access to all levels of healthcare should be just as vibrant and that includes a hospital where they can quickly get the level of care they need when they need it.”
“We will involve the community in every step of this process, and make sure this hospital meets the community’s needs for generations to come,” said Saunders.
In addition to providing care for generations of families, Wellstar actively supports community health and well-being through partnerships with nonprofit, civic and business organizations, as well as academic institutions. Through these partnerships, Wellstar serves all of its neighbors’ needs, ranging from access to healthcare to food and housing insecurity to educational support and career development.