Payton Jordan, at Striders, recalls January heart attack
Payton Jordan is 90 and full of life, as this latest photo gallery shows. He was in his element as the featured speaker at last night’s Southern California Striders awards banquet. The former Stanford and 1968 Olympic coach is Mr. Positive in all ways. Even when describing a near-death experience. With a light touch, Payton shared a terrifying story about his heart attack on January 16, 2007. Having suffered the loss of Marge, his wife of 67 years, and undergone several cancer operations, Payton was weak when he was having some hot chocolate alone at home that night.
Payton described his growing apprehension — after noticing his thumb and arm going numb. He knew what to do.
“I grabbed three big aspirin and started coughing as hard as I could,” he told a spellbound audience of 50 at the Foxfire Restaurant in north Orange County, California. Then, he said, he called 911.
Paramedics rushed him to a local hospital and he found himself on a gurney, hearing a “little Hindu guy” preparing him for an invasive procedure — “they stuck something up my groin.” It was a stent going in, reaching toward his heart. When the stent was inflated, he felt immediate relief.
Feeling fine, Payton insisted that he could go home.
His doctor told him: “Quit being so macho; I’ll tell you when you can go home.”
Alone in his room, Payton spotted a board with the discharge date left blank. Like a mischievous kid, he wrote in “Today.”
His “goofy long-distance runner” doctor didn’t buy it, he said, telling Payton: “Stop this nonsense. You had a heart attack. You are SO stubborn.”
The next morning, his doctor gave in, telling him: “Tell your daughter to take you home.”
Payton told the Striders: “I’m a lot stronger than I look.”
The Striders were founded as an elite, post-collegiate track team in 1955 — with Payton’s help. Now primarily a masters track club, Payton was thanked for his visit and remarks with a lifetime membership. Club President Brenda Matthews presented him a nice framed certificate.
In the awards portion of the evening, Stan Whitley won the 2007 Best Athlete of the Year trophy. At Riccione worlds, Stan won the M60 100, clocking 12.31 into a 0.80 mps breeze. Other awards went to Brenda Matthews (top track female athlete), Linda Cohn (top female field athlete), Doug Smith (male track) and Doug Tomlinson (male field). Rodney Johnson, club historian, won the club’s Renegade Award.
Nov. 19 update:
A friend writes:
I doubt that was a stent going into his abdomen; it sounds like a catheter.* And I doubt that a stent was inflated; it sounds like a balloon that was inflated. In short, it sounds like Payton underwent percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, or PTCA for short.
* A stent may well have been placed in a coronary artery to keep it open. Or maybe you are correct in the sense that both a balloon and stent were attached in some way to the catheter, with the balloon ultimately inflated and the stent ultimately secured in place.
