Amber Kirk’s day began fairly typically on June 4. She visited her 10-year-old daughter’s elementary school for a lunch function and began to feel “a little funny,” but she chalked it up to an anxiety attack, which was not alarming for her.
Kirk, 45, stopped into the school nurse’s office to get her blood pressure checked, and everything returned normal. She left the school and put her 18-month-old son in the car seat and began to consult with what she called “Dr. Google,” looking for answers to her irregular symptoms. It didn’t feel like nausea or pressure, but more like pain.
Kirk called her husband and told him she wasn’t feeling well, and he told her to rest. Less than a half mile into her short drive home from the school, the pain grew intense.
“I started to roll sweat. I started to panic because the pain in my chest was something I never experienced before,” she said. “I was like, ‘What do I do?’ There’s nobody around me.”
She started breathing in her nose and out of her mouth and searched where the nearest fire department was. Kirk, maintaining her breathing despite excruciating pain, drove a mile and a half to the West Thurston Regional Fire Authority station in Rochester and honked her car horn upon arrival. She saw no one.
“I opened the car doors so the baby could get air. I’m panicking. I’m in so much pain. I’m terrified,” Kirk said. “I pushed the emergency button on the wall. I laid on the ground, and it called 911 for me.”
She spoke to an operator through the emergency button, and an ambulance arrived quickly with paramedics rushing to her side to walk her through her breathing and check her vitals.
Kirk said the most surprising part of her pain was that her vitals were normal, so she thought she was having a panic attack like never before.
One paramedic, however, was concerned with how much Kirk was sweating and decided to take her to the hospital. The team asked her if they could take care of her son, who had been in the car when she called for help, and she obliged.
At Providence Centralia Hospital, Kirk’s vitals continued to show normal signs for about 10 minutes until her second electrocardiogram showed she was having an active heart attack. Her doctors decided to transfer her to Providence St. Peter Hospital, where she went into emergency surgery to put a stent in her heart after it was discovered she had a 100% blockage in one of her arteries.
“None of my symptoms made me think about a heart attack. Nothing I was experiencing made me think that it was. I have had anxiety, but this was nothing like anxiety to me,” Kirk said. “I’m 45 years old. I’m overweight, but otherwise I’m healthy and active. What saved my life is that I was listening to my body, but I wasn’t understanding the message.”
Kirk was awake for most of the procedure, which she noted was an all-female team. During all of this, members of the fire department still took care of her son, who began to grow worried about his mother.
“They figured his car seat out on their own. They transported my son. They held him, and they kept him calm because he was starting to get a little worried about mom. They took care of my boy,” she said. “It was an amazing team effort just to make sure I was OK that day.”
Kirk spent the weekend in the hospital, and upon returning, she said her perspective on life has been flipped on its head.
“I’m gonna be on medicine for the rest of my life and I have to learn new things. But it’s all a pathway to eating better and eating to live, not living to eat,” she said. “Before, I would ground myself and absolutely didn’t let moments pass by without feeling gratitude and enjoying the moment. I’m a mother, so I really do force myself to slow down. However, when you’re faced with your own mortality, I see things differently. I could feel like there’s so much I can’t do now and there’s so much I can’t have, but it’s not like that. There’s so much that I can do, that I have in my power and control, and to get healthier and enjoy a longer life.”
Kirk wrote a letter of gratitude for the team at West Thurston Fire that saved her life and presented it to them on Sunday, June 22. In her letter, she wrote that the team’s presence brought “a sense of reassurance” and that they listened to her and did not dismiss her symptoms.
“The reason I wanted to write this letter is to attempt to express my deepest gratitude to everyone there that day,” she wrote. “The selfless service and commitment your team consistently demonstrates to helping others is truly admirable. You are all heroes many times over. Your actions and choices helped me return home to my children and loved ones.”
Through this experience, Kirk wants people to know how deceiving heart attack symptoms can be, how they can sneak up on them and “fool them into thinking it is everyday aches and pains.” She hopes her story can help others listen to and take care of their bodies.
“Thanks to the selfless service of your team, I now have a chance to help others with my story. I am forever thankful,” Kirk wrote in her letter.
