After heart valve surgery and heart attack, he came back to 'finish the run' / CPR First Aid

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After heart valve surgery and heart attack, he
came back to 'finish the run' CPR First Aid
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Chad Lorenz survived heart valve surgery and a
heart attack. (Photo courtesy of Chad Lorenz) At
13, Chad Lorenz's life revolved around sports.
There was flag football in the fall, basketball
and ice hockey in the winter, and track and field
in the spring. During basketball practice, he
found himself short of breath and struggling to
keep up. He struggled enough that his parents
took him to the doctor. The expert's advice He
should never again play sports. Chad was
diagnosed with a condition called aortic
stenosis. It means his heart's aortic valve, the
opening through which blood flows from the heart
to the rest of the body, didn't properly form at
birth.
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The doctor said he would be fine as long as he
didn't push his heart. Devastated, Chad largely
followed doctor's orders. In his late 20s, Chad
was living in Kansas with his wife and their
daughter, Autumn. After so many years without
heart problems, he decided to give running a go
again. "I didn't want Autumn to grow up living a
sedentary life," he said. "I thought the best way
was to lead by example." Chad Lorenz (center)
with his daughter, Autumn, and wife, Laura.
(Photo by John McBride) Chad laced up his
sneakers and headed out for a 3-mile run. "I made
it about a mile," he said. "I kept doing it until
I actually started feeling really good."
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He and a friend found a short race to do
together. Pushing himself felt good. "All of a
sudden, the fire I'd put out when I was 13 came
back blazing," he said. "Maybe in my mind I was
hoping I could beat out of me whatever I'd
had." Four years later, in 2014, Chad's job
required a physical exam. Because of his medical
history, he had an echocardiogram. The next
year, the doctor told Chad the results were worse
than the year before, which were already bad. A
cardiologist ran a battery of tests and was
puzzled that someone with a heart as bad as his
could perform so well. "It was like he'd been
training in high elevation," his wife, Laura,
said. "He had conditioned himself to work that
much harder."
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Chad was referred to a medical center in Kansas
City. When he and Laura arrived for the
appointment, a surgeon entered the room instead
of the cardiologist they'd expected. He told Chad
that he needed open-heart surgery to replace the
defective valve. Chad opted for a mechanical
one. "After the appointment, we got in our car
and looked at each other and said, 'What just
happened?'" Laura said. The surgery went well,
but recovery was tough, even for a
well-conditioned 33-year-old. It was "six months
of awfulness," Chad said. His journey included
depression and an unrelated problem in his back
that required surgery. He returned to running
after six months but didn't feel the immediate
improvement he expected.
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In 2017, 20 months after open-heart surgery, Chad
was 9 miles into a 10-mile run when his heart
began racing and he felt lightheaded. The next
thing he remembers is waking up in the hospital
hooked up to machines. He'd had a heart attack
his left main artery was 99 blocked. Doctors
believe the blockage came from scar tissue from
the valve surgery. The heart attack caused Chad
to go into cardiac arrest. Luckily, a couple saw
him fall. They performed CPR until first
responders arrived. As Chad recovered from the
heart attack, he finally understood the
difference people had been talking about.
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"When I got onto the cardiac rehab treadmill, I
felt the best I'd ever felt in my entire life,"
he said. A year later, Chad, his family, a group
of friends and the couple who performed CPR
gathered to run FTR, or Finish the Run. They
completed the final mile he hadn't the year
before. Chad Lorenz went on to "finish the run"
one year after having a heart attack and cardiac
arrest near the end of a 10-mile race. (Photo
courtesy of Chad Lorenz) Not only did Autumn
catch the running bug, she's started throwing the
javelin. She won a medal in the Junior Olympics.
Chad, or "Coach Dad" as she calls him, coaches
junior track and field and formed a track club in
their hometown.
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Chad ran in the American Heart Association's
Wichita Heart Walk F.A.S.T. 5K in both 2018 and
2019. Last year, he won the overall male
category. (The 2020 event was virtual.) "Now
that I'm really feeling good, I'm getting back
into sprints," he said. "Before I'm 40, I want to
break the 2-minute mark in the 800. That would
rank me nationally at my age level." Learn more
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