that kind of thing. It’s good for a team, in my
opinion, but a lot of the sponsors and marketing
partners don’t necessarily like it because
they’re looking at it as they have one less day of
activation for their sponsor. The good thing is
we have good partners and they’re working with
us to get ready to go race.
Another one of the negatives that I’m not real
crazy about is, of course, NHRA is cutting the
purse. You’re trying to save a little bit of money,
but then again, they’re taking it away, so at the
end of the day, it’s going to be a wash.
So there’s pros and cons. I guess for the betterment
of the sport, we need to start somewhere,
so let’s get going and get racing again so we can
get back to some kind of normalcy.
Obviously, the ordeals that you went through
health-wise is a big part of your story, and just
an incredible story worth retelling over and
over again. Can you give us a glimpse of what
you went through with your heart attack and
the road to recovery from it?
In 2016, we had a great season. We were all
excited about running a lot of races, possibly fulltime
in 2017. The day after I got home from PRI
(late in 2016), where we had sponsor meetings
and announcing a few things for 2017, all of a
sudden I had a widow maker heart attack, which
is basically 100 percent heart failure. It was totally
unexpected. I mean, I had no sign of it. Like I
said, I was just at the PRI show. I spent four
days there and felt great. Didn’t have any loss of
energy or anything. I work out. I exercise. I’ve
always exercised. I’ve always eaten right. I never
smoked. I don’t do drugs. I was pretty healthy. I
considered myself pretty healthy, and then to
come home and have a massive 100 percent heart
failure was pretty shocking.
At first, I didn’t know I had a heart attack. I
thought I had some heartburn, and gradually,
within a minute, I could feel the massive pain
in my chest, like there was an elephant sitting
on my chest. I told my girlfriend at the time to
call 911. I thought I was having a heart attack.
I mean, I could feel it myself. I was kind of in
denial, because I thought I was pretty healthy. I
never had any kind of sign of having any kind of
heart trouble before.
She called 911, and there was a couple of things
that I was lucky to survive this. When you have
100 percent heart failure, there’s less than 10
percent who survive. The luckiest thing was I
live right across the street from the EMT center.
When she dialed 911, the EMT was at my house
within four minutes.
I needed that because within four or five
minutes, I was literally out, passed out almost. I
couldn’t react. I lost vision, my arms were numb.
I couldn’t move. I was nauseous. I couldn’t stand
up. I was basically passing out. My body was literally
shutting down because my heart had stopped.
It wasn’t a little heart attack. It was total heart
failure. My heart had stopped. If it wasn’t for
the EMTs getting there that fast and getting me
stabilized, I wouldn’t have made it.
They got me to the hospital and the emergency
room within 20 minutes, and they kept me
alive until they got me there. I went right into the
emergency room. The one thing that really sticks
out in my mind is the whole ride to the hospital,
the EMTs were talking to me, but I couldn’t respond
to them because my body was shut down.
I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t move my
arms or anything, but I could hear everything
that they were saying. Then when I got into the
emergency room, I could hear the doctor say, “OK,
Mr. Lee, you had heart failure. We’re going to go
through your groin.”
They went in through the groin and opened up
the artery that was 100 percent clogged, which is
the LED, the main artery. That’s the widow maker
artery, which is your main artery through your
heart. It was 100 percent clogged.
They opened it up with stents. They got me
breathing again and got my heart going again,
and they saved my life, basically. I was in the
hospital for over a week, but I remember having
chest pains for a couple of weeks after that. It
turned out I had permanent damage to my heart.
And racing was certainly the furthest thing
from your mind at that point. Did you find out
what contributed to it?
I didn’t think about racing then. I was just
lucky to be alive. I was blessed just to still be
here. Of course, the racing for 2017 obviously
got canceled. The doctor’s telling me, “You have
permanent damage to your heart. Your injection
fraction, which is your efficiency of your heart is
under 30.” A normal heart is in the 70 range and
mine was under 30, which put me at high risk
for another heart attack.
It turned out that my grandfather died of a
heart attack and so did his two brothers, so I had
hereditary heart disease.
One of the great regrets that I have is I didn’t
go have a stress test. The stress test would have
June 2020
DragIllustrated.com | Drag Illustrated | 65