From Heart Attack to Ironman:
A Doctor's Inspiring Recovery Journey at San Antonio Regional Hospital

Hi. My name is Kyle Smart. I'm a family medicine physician in the local area and I've been with San Antonio Regional Hospital for over twenty years now. I was actually born in San Antonio like a lot of, like a lot of the employees there and staff that are associated with the campus. My dad was born at San Antonio Regional Hospital and all four of my daughters were born at San Antonio Regional Hospital. Saturday, December 14, our second oldest daughter Grace, very proud of her, graduating from Cal State San Bernardino. My wife, Diane and I, we were very focused on making this a big celebration. A bunch of friends and family and celebrated Grace that day. And I was cleaning up, after the party and I ended up heading to bed about one in the morning on now, Sunday, the December 15, and that's when the chest pain hit.

When I first felt the chest pain, knew that didn't feel right. It was kind of a pain I had not felt before. The chest pain was everything we're warned about as a community, as patients, as medical providers. It was severe, radiating, causing nausea, sweating, and, it eventually got to the point where I needed to get checked out. I think it's a little bit of a unique story in that I have known and worked with these physicians like Dr. Kevin Parks in the emergency room, Dr. Roger Duber, cardiologist. We've worked on cases together over the last twenty years.

The way I felt when I was coming to terms with the gravity of the situation that I was going through, that I was having a heart attack, then I had to really realize I am not in the driver's seat and I had to submit to the process. And there, Dr. Duber’s and team got me scheduled for an antigram. There was a certain amount of shock as we were processing those emotions. The nursing staff at the hospital, amazing. They allowed us to have our emotions and process and ask a million questions. They were patient and let us go through that part of kind of the emotional, psychological, and spiritual journey that we were going through in that moment, all right alongside the physical journey that we were on. I think there was also a little bit of frustration because I had worked really hard to, get back in shape.

And, the irony of me having, having a heart attack, despite those efforts was also a little frustrating. In fact, that's one of the questions my wife and I had to the specialists was, had I ever done it? And they said, absolutely not. The work I had put in, doing these new, what was new for me, swim, bike, and run, and getting in shape and losing weight had definitely saved my life. I was hoping to come out of there with no stents or as few stents as possible. So when Dr. Duber, approached me and said, you don't need any stents. You need a five-vessel bypass surgery. He was so calm and so confident and he said he's going to be fine.

The cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Nan Wang recognized that and he was amazing. My first memories coming out of surgery started to realize I was in recovery and I could hear my wife and daughters recovering. And after a surgery like that, just getting out of bed, taking a few steps, those are those are blessings and you don't take those things for granted. And in the cardiac care unit, they have an amazing physical therapy team that, started working with me in the first few weeks after the surgery. I went from having a difficult time going up and downstairs to walking, you know, a few blocks and building that up to a half mile and eventually a mile and up to three miles. An important part of my story is Ironman, specifically half Ironman or the 70.3, races. And so, I actually had a race scheduled in May 2025, but because of my heart attack and my life saving bypass surgery in December, I had really let that race go.

I knew I probably would not be able to do that, to be in shape and be recovered enough to do that. But I thought, you know what? I'm still going to show up for my team and be the best cheerleader, for them and still be there, at the race to support them. So as I started, recovering and retraining, I picked up right where I left off. It was really a miracle. Another part of the miraculous part of that story where I was shocking shocked and I was thankful. I started swimming again, and doing the same distances I was in my prior training, biking and running the same. That was a little dangerous because it gave me hope that I might be able to, participate in this race. Maybe not the whole thing, but I could I could do a leg of the race in a real with a relay team.