The story of a local community leader’s health scare stresses the importance of knowing a patient’s medical history and to pay close attention to symptoms.Marketing Director of the Warren Achievement Center in Monmouth and Warren County Board Member Sean Cavanaugh was experiencing flu-like symptoms one day in mid-July. After staying home from work and taking over-the-counter medications, Cavanaugh had what he described as a persistent gas bubble in his chest. Then after the pain started traveling across his back and down each arm the 48 year old drove himself to OSF Holy Family Medical Center in Monmouth. A blood test showed elevated levels of an enzyme indicating cardiac distress. Cavanaugh was then life-flighted to OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria. An MRI revealed his stomach virus had affected his heart muscles and gave him classic symptoms of a heart attack. Dr. Mark Hsu of OSF Cardiovascular Institute treated Cavanaugh and said his case is also a reminder for everyone to pay close attention to symptoms that seem above-and-beyond what a person might experience with a common illness. “If the shortness of breath is worse than a typical flu, worse than a typical cold … if the chest pain is worse, or sharper or more bothersome, then certainly it would be a reasonable thing to get it checked out,” he advised. Cavanaugh spent a few days at OSF Saint Francis. His OSF HealthCare doctors in Monmouth have continued to monitor Cavanaugh and he expects to return to full health. “I was fortunate it wasn’t a heart attack. But it was something that could have been very serious … life-long, altering serious. They took care of business. In a few weeks, I’ll be fit as a fiddle doing one-armed push-ups in the parking lot,” Cavanaugh told the OSF Newsroom. “Everyone should listen to their body. If you think there’s something out of the ordinary then go get it checked out,” he added, “Even if I didn’t have insurance, the cost of an emergency room bill would be better than the cost of a funeral for my family to bear so I think that’s a pretty good trade-off.”
