In-flight heart scare puts Spokane on man’s radar

Until a couple of weeks ago, Jeanette Lindstrom had never heard of Spokane.

“I’d expected this little village,” she said Tuesday.

But it’s now unlikely she and her husband, Yngve Lindstrom, will ever forget Spokane, or, more importantly, Sacred Heart Medical Center.

The Lindstroms are from Stockholm, Sweden. On May 3, Yngve was flying from Frankfurt to San Francisco to meet his wife, who was visiting her father. Yngve was on United Airlines Flight 901 when he had chest pains.

A flight attendant asked if there was a doctor on board. A veterinarian and a podiatrist raised their hands, Yngve Lindstrom said.

“I’d have taken anything at that time,” he joked.

Finally, an emergency physician stood up. The doctor gave him some nitroglycerine tablets, but the searing chest pain continued. He lay down in the galley, amid the clacking carts and coffee pots, but the pain did not let up. The doctor talked with the pilot; it was decided they couldn’t risk keeping Lindstrom on the plane.

“They said they were going to land at something called ‘Spo-cane,’ ” said Lindstrom, 62, who just retired as a city administrator in Stockholm.

The flight made an unscheduled landing, and Lindstrom was whisked to Sacred Heart.

His wife, meanwhile, was waiting at the airport in San Francisco when her sister-in-law called to say that Yngve was at a Spokane hospital.

“I was in such a state of shock,” she said. “I was pacing up and down.”

She caught a flight to Spokane. On the drive to the hospital, a taxi driver reassured her. He said, “This couldn’t have happened in a better place,” she recalled.

Tests found Lindstrom had a blockage in the main artery on the front of his heart, the left anterior descending artery, said Dr. Leland Siwek, the heart surgeon who operated on Lindstrom.

The blockage was in an inconvenient spot to place a stent, Siwek said, so Lindstrom underwent open-heart surgery May 7.

The stress of flying and the effect of the high altitude may have brought on the chest pain, Siwek said. Lindstrom did not have a heart attack, but it’s tough to diagnose that on a plane.

“In retrospect, he might have been fine,” had the flight continued to San Francisco, Siwek said.

Lindstrom has been staying in a hotel since he was released from the hospital on Saturday.

He and his wife have visited Manito Park, seen the falls and have done some shopping, though Yngve still tires easily. He’ll have one more check-up and hopes to fly with his wife to Oakland, Calif., on Thursday. The couple plan to stay there for two weeks before heading back to Sweden.

This Saturday, they’ll celebrate their 37th wedding anniversary.

“I’m just glad that he’s around for the anniversary,” Jeanette said as she put her arms around her husband’s shoulder.