Mumbai: 16-year-old collapses due to heart attack, lives to tell the tale

Heart attack is for old people or so goes the general consensus But a teenager in the city may as well be the youngest ever person to have had a heart attack owing to his habit of chewing tobacco and smoking beedis since the age of 11 Luckily he survived On November 20 Ashok Kumar 16 went to a public toilet in Ghatkopar East to answer naturersquos callAshok is currently recovering in the ICCU of Rajawadi Hospital This picture has been taken with the permission of the patient and the doctor PicsSuresh KKAs he came out he started sweating profusely and collapsed to the ground in full view of everybody Instead of taking him to the hospital people there asked for a relativersquos contact number to make a phone call In acute pain Ashok produced his diary and the emergency was conveyed to a relative who came to his rescue and took him to Rajawadi HospitalAshokrsquos family says they will ask him to return to their village so that he doesnrsquot revert to his smoking ways The picture has been taken with the permission of Ashok and the doctorVeteran smokerDr Sachin Payannavar ICCU medical officer at Rajawadi Hospital said ldquoThe boy was brought in with complaints of chest pain perspiration and pain radiating to the left upper limb see box An ECG revealed that he was having an acute myocardial infarction the medical term for an event commonly known as a heart attackHe was immediately put on lifesaving drugs and his ECG was monitored thereafter continuously By evening his ECG reports showed signs of improvementrdquo ldquoWe get an average of 3040 cases of heart attacks a month in elderly patients at our hospital but this was the first case involving a juvenilerdquo explained Dr PayannavarAshok has been chewing tobacco and puffing beedis and cigarettes since he was 11 A resident of Basti district in Uttar Pradesh he had come to Mumbai to earn a living He told doctors that he was addicted to tobacco and sometimes even smoked ganja He also drank occasionally A dropout of Std V he started loitering with his friends in his village and began by smoking one cigarette or beedi a day which went up to 67 daily He then graduated to ganja and alcoholAshok told midday ldquoAll I remember is that the chest pain was unbearable and I thought I wouldnrsquot survive My relative put me in an ambulance and when I opened my eyes I was in the hospital I am feeling better now and want to go to my parentsrdquo Dr Payannavar added ldquoSince the boy was addicted to such intoxicants for the last five years he was already in the highrisk bracket of cardiovascular diseasesHe was lucky to survive a major heart attack and any delay could have been fatal We have advised him to quit his addictions immediately or else he could endanger his life We will require an angiography for which he will be referred to Sion or KEM soon where we may need financial assistance from an NGO for treatmentrdquoDr Anil Chopde deputy medical superintendent at the hospital stated ldquoIn the 27 years of my career this is the first case where a young boy of 16 years has been brought in with a heart attack One of the factors is tobacco addiction at an early agerdquo Ashok started working at the age of 14 with his fellow villagers in different parts of the country doing odd jobs like masonry and carpentryIn August 2014 he was in Hyderabad working in an apartment when he fell unconscious and was admitted to a hospital Doctors had then advised him to keep away from smoking and his addictions but he ignored them Ashok has been staying away from his family who have no idea of his addictions His father Ram Nayan 55 said ldquoNobody in our family has heartrelated ailmentsAshok is the eldest of four children and is a school dropout He has never smoked in our presence but we are not aware of what he does outside the houserdquo Ram Nayan himself is a smoker and confessed to puffing 67 beedis a day and drinking occasionally A fisherman by profession Ram Nayan is the sole breadwinner for his family earning Rs 100 to Rs 150 a dayAshok was working in Ulhasnagar for Rs 250 per day ldquoAshok in the last five months has only sent home a money order of Rs 2000 We received it just two days before we learnt about his hospitalisationrdquo his father recalled However Ram Nayan refuses to come to Mumbai citing financial strainBut once his son recovers he will be ordered to come home where he would be under strict vigil to ensure he doesnrsquot smoke or drink again ldquoHe will help me in my regular work I wonrsquot send him to Mumbai againrdquo Ram Nayan stated