An Elephant on the Chest - A Veteran Sheriff Officer's Journey Towards Physical and Mental Recovery After a Massive Heart Attack

Jason Presley was gone.

For nearly two-and-a-half agonizing minutes, doctors and nurses feverishly performed chest compressions on the Arapahoe County (Colo.) Sheriff’s Office Deputy as he lay lifeless in the intensive care unit. But after a second shock, his heart began beating, his eyes opened, and – while he wasn’t sure what happened – he started the first chapter of his new lease on life. 

Those harrowing early-morning hours of Dec. 31, 2019, and the hellish year-and-a-half of physical recovery and mental health care from his massive heart attack have given Presley a fresh outlook on his job and a message for his fellow officers: take care of yourself. 

‍‘AN ELEPHANT ON THE CHEST’‍

Presley, 50, has been with the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office for 19 years, and for the first 16 years, he succumbed to the challenges of shift work. While he ran regularly and kept himself in what he thought was good physical shape, he had demons from previous calls and became a regular purveyor of fast food while at work who regularly drank on days off. 

“I had some PTSD from calls I had dealt with. I hit the bottle; I drank like a fish. I would sit down and put down a fifth of Jack like it was nothing, and it would erase my problems,” Presley said. “That and shift work, eating at McDonald’s three times a shift - it was my own fault and I had to accept responsibility for that.”

But up until 3 a.m. on that New Year’s Eve in 2019, Presley had no idea that those choices over his career were conspiring against him. While laying in bed, he suddenly felt like an elephant was standing on his chest and, not believing anything serious was wrong, he took what he estimated to be 30 antacids and tried to wait it out.

Around 7 a.m., while his wife was getting ready to leave for work, Presley finally decided to go to an urgent care, where he was told he was having a heart attack and was immediately sent to the emergency room at Parker Adventist Hospital. After a trip to the catheterization lab, doctors found a 100 percent blockage in one artery and an 80 percent blockage in another. 

Presley was moved to the ICU, and about a half-hour later, he remembered feeling light-headed before he went into cardiac arrest. His wife, Kathy, told Presley he was gray and after he regained his pulse, he woke up, looked around confused, and realized when he tried to get out of bed with seven broken ribs what happened.

He was sent home from the hospital after a few days with a defibrillator vest that would shock his heart if he went into cardiac arrest again and what his doctors described as a 2 percent chance of living through the next month. 

‍REHAB OF THE BODY AND THE MIND‍

After shedding his defibrillator vest, Presley started what was expected to be an arduous journey of cardiac rehabilitation, but he made it clear to the staff that he wouldn’t be there for long. 

“On my first day I showed up at a downtown Denver hospital and was like, ‘Hey, what do I have to do to not have to come here twice a week for the next six months?’” Presley asked the staff. 

He was told it had never been done before, but doctors laid out what he would need to accomplish on a treadmill before he would be cleared to return to work. As Presley tells it, he “crushed” his exam and test. Less than a month after his heart stopped beating in the hospital, he was back to work with a new outlook and a new diet.

“My wife was very stern with me. I eat like a rabbit now. If I enjoy a beer, it’s on a special occasion now,” Presley said, adding that he’s cut out red meat since his heart attack. “It was just a total lifestyle change in that regard and my wife was very firm on that. She was like, ‘You’re not going to die on me. I’m not going to be a widow.’”

While his physical recovery hummed along, he noticed that his mental recovery wasn’t occurring at the same rapid pace. Sleepless nights led him to a sleep apnea diagnosis, and after six months of his mind racing, he had reached a breaking point.

“Every little tick I had in my chest, I was like ‘I’m going to die.’ You want to talk about anxiety, good lord,” Presley said. “It progressively got worse and I finally told myself, ‘I’ve got to go see somebody.’”

His therapist didn’t sugarcoat her advice, Presley said, telling him to “live life, enjoy life, have a purpose, help people, and stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Between an outlet for talking to someone and the gift of a book that provided him with a roadmap to coming out better on the other side of his heart attack – Extreme Ownership by Navy SEALs Jocko Willinik and Leif Babin – Presley has been able to focus on his recovery without anxiety affecting his every move. 

That recovery didn’t just include him. Opening up to therapists and coworkers gave him the ability to help his family who witnessed him crashing in the hospital to heal as well. 

“The worst part of it and the thing I still have some mental issues with is that my wife and son had to sit there and watch them work me in the ICU,” Presley said. “After that second shock, I woke up with no chest pain and looked around and my wife and son were literally on the floor bawling. I looked at the nurse and said, ‘Why the hell is she crying? She never cries.’ I tried to get out of bed and then I realized what happened.”

‍MESSAGE TO COWORKERS‍

Deputy Presley now works in the Community Relations Division and is also the president of Arapahoe FOP Lodge 31 after previously serving as a SWAT negotiator and school resource officer.His life was “pure hell” for a year-and-a-half as he struggled to bounce back mentally from his debilitating heart attack. Now, with his recovery kicked into high gear, he pays it forward and talks with his coworkers about the prevalence of heart attacks in police officers and the need for officers to air their problems with others. 

Presley lamented what he calls a lack of awareness in the police world for the threat of heart attacks and praised his department for leading the charge toward improving officers’ lives. Law enforcement officers are at least 30 times more likely to suffer sudden cardiac death when they’re involved in stressful situations than when they’re involved in routine and non-emergency calls, according to data from the Harvard School of Public Health and Cambridge Health Alliance. On top of that, the average age of a police officer who suffers a heart attack is 46, according to Sigma Tactical Wellness - that’s 19 years less than the average heart attack in a civilian.

About a month after he returned to work, the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office offered heart screenings to anyone in the agency and five officers found out they had at least 60 percent blockages and have since taken steps to correct their heart issues, Presley said. 

“If what happened to me helps save other guys, then good,” Presley said, adding that each of those five officers credited him with helping them. “It was worth it just to get the awareness out. It takes a tragedy to make change.”

Since his heart attack, Presley has made it his mission to talk to others about taking action early in their careers to lead healthier lives and talk about issues bothering them at work, noting that he had no warning signs and no progressive inclines of pain or discomfort – just an elephant standing on his chest at 3 a.m. 

“Start young. Don’t take your health for granted. Tell the people who matter to you that you love them,” Presley said. “Just take it seriously, it’s no joke. The earlier you start, the better it’s going to be on you. Don’t be me at 47 and think you’re invincible, because you’re not. Sooner or later it will catch up with you.”