Taking Stock: Greg Prater reinvents
his lifestyle after vascular disease

Before his heart attack in December 2002, 40-year-old Greg Prater’s wife Shawna and 20-year-old daughter Erika were always after him to eat better. More salads, vegetables and fruit. Less red meat and ice cream. Because Prater didn’t smoke, didn’t have a history of heart disease in his family, exercised sporadically and wasn’t overweight, he didn’t pay much attention.

Severe chest pains at 4:30 one cold Sunday morning got his attention, however.

“I immediately thought I was probably having a heart attack and I remember feeling shocked because I didn’t have a lot of the risk factors,” Prater says, from his home between Republic and Mount Vernon, which looks out on a large water garden that the family built together.

“I eat a lot better now than I did then. I haven’t had any ice cream since the heart attack. I eat a lot more fruits and vegetables now, and leaner meats. We butcher our own cattle, so we make sure it’s lean, and I eat more chicken than beef now.”
The December morning he awoke with chest pains, Prater called his wife, a surgical tech who was on duty at St. John’s, and told her he thought he was having a heart attack. Shawna urged him to wake their daughter and get to St. John’s quickly.
Erika drove her dad to St. John’s emergency trauma center, where he found out his total cholesterol was 250 mg/dL.

Cardiologists recommend patients keep total cholesterol levels below 200. Prater also had high blood pressure – 180 over 127. After an electrocardiogram (EKG) Prater was taken to the cardiac catheterization lab at St. John’s, where cardiologist
Ron Smalling, M.D., performed an angiogram, which revealed a 99 percent blockage in one of his coronary arteries and a partial blockage in another artery. Smalling performed an angioplasty to clear the blockage and put a stent in Prater’s artery to keep it open.

“The nurses and doctors at St. John’s took excellent care of me when I was in the hospital. They watched over me like hawks,” Prater says.

He went home a few days later and rested for three weeks before going back to work as a maintenance man for a Springfield apartment complex. He exercises every weekday morning before work at St. John’s Hammons Heart Institute, where he jogs, works out on an elliptical trainer and lifts weights.

“I’ve dropped 17 pounds since I started working out,” he says. He takes an aspirin a day and cholesterol and blood pressure medication.

Prater’s prognosis is excellent, Smalling says, if he continues to exercise, eat a heart-healthy diet and monitor and treat his blood pressure and cholesterol levels aggressively. He will have to manage his vascular disease for the rest of his life, however.
“Once you develop a form of vascular disease, you have it for the rest of your life,” Smalling says. “Greg is a relatively young person who developed atherosclerotic vascular disease, and it manifested itself in the arteries in his heart, causing his heart attack,” Smalling says.

“Coronary vascular, cerebrovascular and peripheral vascular diseases are all forms of the atherosclerotic vascular process, in which deposits of plaque build up in the inner lining of an artery. Fifty percent of people who have peripheral vascular disease also have coronary vascular disease,” Smalling says. “The goal for younger people with vascular disease like Greg, is to manage these disease processes very aggressively to minimize the rate of progression of the arterial vascular disease. That means tight management of blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking cessation for those who smoke.”

Aggressively monitoring and managing these conditions greatly reduces a vascular disease patient’s chances for developing future diseases such as heart attack, stroke, kidney failure or diseases of the aorta and blood vessels affecting the legs, Smalling says.

“I’m lucky that I was able to recognize the warning signs – I just knew that my chest didn’t feel right and I needed to get to the hospital,” Prater says. “I’m also lucky that I have the support of my family. They’ve always made sure to eat right, and now I just have to follow their lead.”

What is Vascular Disease?

Vascular disease refers to diseases of blood vessels or arteries. Coronary vascular disease, which caused Prater’s heart attack, results in the narrowing of blood vessels or arteries to the heart. Cerebrovascular disease is a narrowing of the blood vessels in the brain and causes stroke. Vascular disease that affects the vessels and arteries outside the heart or brain is known as peripheral vascular disease and commonly results in poor circulation in the arms and legs. The onset of vascular disease is accelerated by smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.