After three heart attacks in four days, one AdventHealth employee sees healthcare from the other side

For a decade, Tommy Bell has walked the hallways at AdventHealth DeLand, helping patients get where they need to go. He greets people with familiarity and care, the way you might greet someone you know well - using humor to ease nerves and knowing when silence matters more.

He never expected to need that same care himself.

The day before Thanksgiving, Bell, 62, finished his workday and started driving to his home in Deltona. During a phone call with his wife, Joi, he felt pressure in the center of his chest.

“It wasn’t on the side like people think,” Bell said. “It was right in the center, like someone had a knuckle pressed into my chest and just kept grinding.”

The sensation came and went, but it didn’t feel right. Instead of continuing home, Bell turned around and went back to the hospital.

Within minutes of arriving at the emergency department at AdventHealth DeLand, Bell was being evaluated. Tests and imaging followed. He was scheduled to return two days later for a cardiac procedure. During that procedure, he suffered a heart attack.

A stent was placed in his heart to normalize blood flow. He was stabilized and moved to intensive care to recover before being discharged home Sunday night.

As his heart continued to recover at home, Bell felt something wasn’t right again on Tuesday morning. He told his wife and she brought him back to the emergency department, where clinicians quickly recognized his condition required immediate attention.

What followed comes to him in fragments.

“I don’t remember it as a whole movie,” Bell said. “It’s just frames. A wheelchair. Faces. People moving fast.”

He was rushed to AdventHealth DeLand’s cardiac catheterization lab, where Dr. Janak Bhavsar and the care team determined that a blood clot had formed at the site of the recently placed stent, restricting blood flow. Over more than two hours, Bhavsar worked to clear additional arteries surrounding Bell’s heart and placed three more stents to restore circulation.

Bhavsar said intervention was necessary for Bell’s case. Knowing that he was saving a team member’s carried added weight to the work.

“You care for them the same way you would any patient,” Bhavsar said. “But knowing it’s a teammate makes you want to do everything possible to help.”

When Bell woke up, he was back in the ICU.

“I remember coming around and realizing where I was,” he said. “That’s when it hit me. This is real.”

By the end of the week, Bell had survived three heart attacks in four days.

What stays with Bell now isn’t the technology or the procedures, but how he and his wife were supported during some of the most uncertain moments of their lives. Seeing himself on the receiving end of that care was humbling.

“Watching my own team transport me,” said Bell, who is the patient transport supervisor at AdventHealth DeLand, “that changed me. I kept thinking, I shouldn’t be the one in the bed.”

ICU nurse Shawnna Ward said it was hard to reconcile Bell’s condition with the person they knew.

“We were scared with him,” she said. “He was hurting so bad, but seeing him back in the hallways after his recovery, you know you were a part of that.”

After a short two-week recovery, Bell returned to the hospital he knows well. He still believes a smile or a laugh can help someone feel less alone.

That instinct shows up even in passing moments. Bell was riding in an elevator when a woman visiting the hospital asked how he was doing.

He gave a serious answer, then followed it with a lighthearted remark that caught her off guard. After a brief pause, she laughed, surprised, before continuing on her way.

“If I can get someone to laugh,” Bell said, “I’ve got them.”