A resident from Blackfalds is joining doctors in their pleas to AHS and the Health Minister for help gaining access to life saving procedures for heart attack victims.

Carol Konzuk says looking back she remembers the moment she realized she was having a heart attack three years ago.

“I knew something was happening, I was having trouble breathing and walking up and down the stairs.”

After being taken to the Red Deer Regional Hospital she spent five days in the coronary care unit before being transferred to the Foothills Hospital in Calgary.

“It’s busy, it’s really busy. There were people there from Stettler, Rocky Mountain House and Northern Alberta,” Konzuk said. “There were four of us in the room waiting to go in and have the procedure. At that point in time one lady went and another came into her place. So the beds were never empty.”

After learning Red Deer has no cardiac catheterization lab, Konzuk said she was lucky after realizing Central Alberta is not equipped to deal with heart attacks.

Something only available in Alberta’s two major cities, Calgary and Edmonton.

An Alberta Health Services document written in December 2014 examined the need for more cardiac services in Central Alberta.

It found that people in the central region had a 70 per cent higher death rate than people in Calgary between 2007 and 2010.

A more recent AHS report shows that heart attack mortality rates are improving but doctors say dollars are still being wasted and people are dying.

“Having a cath lab here saves 3.5 million dollars, conservative estimate and 35 lives conservative estimate,” Red Deer Cardiologist Dr. Gustavo Nogareda said.

If you break these numbers down that’s roughly 1.5 million dollars annually in transportation costs and roughly 2 million dollars spent on lengthy hospital stays.”

But for years doctors say their pleas to AHS and the health minister have fallen on deaf ears and a petition has been launched asking for the public’s help.

Doctors have also started a Facebook group and say the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation has already raised 10 million dollars to build the catheterization lab.

But AHS said it’s not that simple.

“There are challenges of space at the site and it has to be taken within the context of the overall site development at the Red Deer Regional Hospital,” Chief Zone Officer Kerry Bales said.

Bales said it will continue to work to improve heart attack mortality rates and are starting to put together a business plan to address the cardiac needs for the area.

“Within Red Deer we’ve been doing some long range capital planning, as well as long range planning for the zone as a whole. When we look at cardiac service planning we don’t look at it with just a particular site, we look at it in the context of the entire zone.”

But if and when Red Deer will get a catheterization lab, Bales said he can’t say.

Red Deer resident, Ron Dean said he was lucky to be at a sales conference in Calgary when he had his heart attack seven years ago.

“I feel very fortunate for the simple fact is the doctor told me that if I had of been in Red Deer STARS wouldn’t have gotten me there quick enough, I was down to just seconds.”

Something he said happened to two of his friends from Innisfail who didn’t make it to Calgary in time, Dean added it’s something he worries about.

“If I have another heart attack, there won’t be one after that, I’ll be dead because they won’t have time to do nothing,” Ron Dean said.

Konzuk said she has similar concerns. 

“Even with keeping up with your health it can happen, and I can probably get to the Red Deer hospital quick enough, but this would be the second time around. Would I be able to make it to Foothills or the U of A in Edmonton in time and that’s scary.”

With the Red Deer Regional Hospital being the fourth acute hospital in the province and serving around 350,000 people in Central Alberta, doctors say the demand is there and until they hear an answer from the government, they won’t stop fighting.