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This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

ROSE PARK — Ben Bott runs 18 miles a week. He runs 6 miles straight in about 52 minutes. He is grateful for the time and every single step. That's because four years ago Bott died.

"I felt tired and I was going to sit down, and I just fell over on my face right down at the feet of the only guy in the whole gym that knew how to do CPR," said Bott.

The friend and paramedics performed CPR for 20 minutes. Doctor's actually declared him dead of a heart attack. After seven shocks they decided to shock him one more time.

"All of a sudden they got a faint pulse," said Bott. They rushed him to Intermountain Medical Center, where a trauma team worked for almost 16 hours to stabilize him and get him into surgery.

"I had a blood clot that was blocking off my whole LAD artery (left anterior descending artery), 100 percent blockage," said Bott.

But he had no symptoms prior. Tests determined he had indeed experienced a heart attack, caused from a blood clot in his calf. He had deep vein thrombosis, or DVT. "It's pretty rare for a 37-year-old to die of a heart attack without any symptoms," Bott said.

So rare that he's practically a rock-star when he returns to the hospital. All the doctors who worked on him or know his case wanted to shake his hand and check-up with him on his progress.

Although Bott had no symptoms, he did have a family history. His father died of cardiac arrest in his 40s.

"When there's a strong family history of heart disease it's even more important to be aware of your heart and to look at methods to screen for heart disease," said Dr. Kirk Knowlton, director of cardiovascular research at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute.

You can't control your genetics, but you can get screened and control the following heart disease risk factors: blood pressure, cholesterol, stress, not smoking, exercising and diet.

Associated with exercise and what we eat is the risk of diabetes. Knowlton said, "As we gain weight our risk of developing diabetes increases and people who have diabetes have an increased risk of heart disease."

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Knowlton said, "It's just something we just don't like to think about, or we don't want to admit we might be at risk of having something like that."

"It's a big part of my life because it was a big wake up call," Bott said. "I consider myself a fit in shape guy and I literally died of a heart attack, so it's something I don't take for granted."


Erin Goff is a special projects producer who heads up the Your Life Your Health, Road to Zero Fatalities and High 5 initiatives. For questions, feedback or possible story ideas, please email egoff@ksl.com.

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Erin Goff

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