Patient Story: Mitchell Stein
On April 17, 2025, as Mitchell Stein lay in bed at MidCoast Hospital in Brunswick, his family wasn’t sure if he’d live to see another day. “The first emergency room doctor told my wife, ‘Prepare yourself, he may not make it,’” recalled Mitchell in a recent conversation. He had an 80 percent blockage in his heart and was experiencing the worst pain he’d ever felt in his life.
A few hours later, during heart surgery, his nurse called his family and put the phone on speaker from the operating room. “Hi,” Mitchell remembers telling his wife while still slightly sedated. “I’m going to be okay.” And he was right. Forty-nine hours after an ambulance picked him up with a heart attack, Mitchell walked back into his home.
April 17 began with Mitchell installing new raised beds in his garden. After about two and half hours of work, he started feeling fatigued and short of breath.
“I came inside, I sat down for a few minutes, and thought ‘well, I guess I’m doing okay.’ So, I went back outside for another two or three minutes and realized something was not right,” remembered Mitchell. His wife, Martha, insisted they call an ambulance to take him to the hospital.
“The Brunswick Fire Department EMS team arrived at our house within five minutes,” said Mitchell. “Before pulling out of the driveway, I was hooked up to monitors, and they were in contact with the hospital.” He was given Aspirin and Nitro to help with his symptoms.
When he arrived at the hospital, doctors discovered plaque had formed at the junction of an artery and a stent that had been inserted after a smaller heart attack seven years prior. When he had been working in the garden, the plaque likely disengaged from the stent and started to form a clot. At the hospital, his care team administered clot buster drugs and confirmed Michell needed immediate heart surgery.
Mitchell said the doctors were worried about the out-of-hospital time in an ambulance. It takes about 40 minutes for an ambulance to drive from MidCoast Hospital to Maine Med and even longer if there’s traffic. For a LifeFlight helicopter, the transport time is about seven minutes. Each LifeFlight vehicle is equipped with the medical technology of an ICU, including invasive cardiac and neuromonitoring. MidCoast Hospital did not have the staff or equipment for the procedure, so a LifeFlight crew was called to transport Mitchell to Maine Medical Center in Portland.
“Certainly, sometimes taking a ground ambulance is fine, but sometimes speed matters and with such a spread out state we can’t have every specialty service in every facility. And so that’s where LifeFlight comes in,” he said. “In my case, the risk of something happening while I was in the ambulance was too great,” explained Mitchell.
After the crew landed at Maine Med, doctors immediately started operating. The LifeFlight crew was able to be in the observation room of the Cath Lab for part of the procedure.
“So, they got to see the good results of their intervention,” said Mitchell.
Left: Mitchell in the LifeFlight of Maine helicopter. Right: Mitchell recovering at home. Photos courtesy of Mitchell Stein.
Doctors removed the blockage and inserted a new stent in Mitchell’s heart. He says after the catheterization was completed, he was eager to get back on his feet.
“The following day, when I was in the cardiac ICU, two of the three people from the LifeFlight crew were in the cardiac ICU with another patient, so I got to say hello to them. They were shocked that I was walking around,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell credits his expedited recovery and minimal heart damage in part to how quickly he was able to get from his home in Brunswick to the Cardiac Catheterization Lab at Maine Med.
“I think it’s so important that people understand that every second counts in these situations and that you know your body best. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll know that something is not right, as I did,” shared Mitchell.
Mitchell is back at home with Martha, and his dog, Dolly. He takes four walks a day, helping with his cardiac rehab. Mitchell, who spent his career in health policy, is sharing his story to encourage others to call for medical help when they need it. He’s grateful his wife encouraged him to call for an ambulance that April day, and that his care team connected with LifeFlight. “I consider myself very lucky.”
