MY STORY
I'm Matt Edison, just a guy who almost died four times, lived to tell about it, and because of that, dedicated my life to figuring out how to help others live their best lives.
The impact so far has been remarkable... business owners that didn't have hope for the future, on the verge of financial ruin, turned their company around in less than two years, increased net income 20 points, reduced crushing debt to zero, increased cash to 20% of sales and built a seven month backlog in orders.
A young adult who smoked three packs of cigarettes a week quit without trying and a woman who suffered debilitating panic attacks no longer has a trace of them.
As the leader of a summertime high school mission trip for 160 young adults and chaperones, I've helped enable many lasting personal transformations.
It all started when I left a 20 year career in chemicals and a life near Philadelphia and started a new job as President of an aerospace and defense start-up outside Boston.
Within six months of starting my new job I suffered a brief bout of pneumonia that left me with what felt like two kabob skewers stabbing my chest near my heart when I walked quickly. It took six weeks to figure out that without family history or anything medically wrong my Widowmaker artery was plugged 90%.
The Widowmaker artery or Left Anterior Descending artery, is on the outside of your heart muscle and is one in which if you have a heart attack there and blood flow stops, so much heart muscle dies that you can’t be paddled back to life with an AED or with chest compressions.
An outpatient stent placement the day after the stress test fixed this problem and back to work I went, no restrictions and no heart damage. That lasted for fourteen months and on an anniversary trip I noticed that a single kabob skewer was back each time I walked quickly. The cardiac interventionist went back in and found the same artery was now blocked 95%.
Another stent was put partially inside the first one to make one longer stent and that solved the problem. Back to work I went with no restrictions. I felt great. In fact I decided next year to get in shape for a local triathlon. That worked okay for a while.
One night while I was working out doing burpees, a combination push up and jumping jack, I went up on a push up and immediately felt funny. From that point forward and in less than twenty minutes, a police car, an ambulance and a fire truck were at my door to respond to the heart attack I was having.
The emergency room cardiologist went in and found that the same spot was ok but a blood clot had formed on the end of the stent and that had come loose and plugged up two neighboring arteries to 99%, hence the heart attack. That doctor sucked out the clots and sent me on my way with a green light.
This time I dutifully did cardiac rehab with the geriatric crew but as the weeks wore on I began to feel a new odd bilateral neck pain that grew slowly in pain level. After traveling for business to Oklahoma and Missouri and working out in the hotel gyms feeling this pain, I scheduled a visit with my new cardiologist at Mass General Hospital.
He had me take a stress test Monday and was to see me on Wednesday for a consult. I failed the stress test. When the Doctor came into the examining room Wednesday he sat down, opened my file and in three seconds said that I was to be on an operating table in the next thirty minutes for a catheterization to see what was wrong.
They found that the two neighboring arteries were blocked again and to 99% and the Widowmaker was now plugged to 60%. My doctor said that I was not allowed to leave the hospital until I had a triple bypass. I was 47 years old.
Since I was stable, I was to have the surgery Sunday, Mother’s Day. Because of the blockages I was on a nitroglycerin drip to help thin my blood and keep my arteries open. Nice stuff but don’t get out of bed because you’ll pass out. That worked until Saturday morning at 2 AM when I called for a nurse because my tell tale pains were back and strong. They upped the nitro to 140 on a 300 scale from about 40.
Saturday afternoon they said other more critical people were coming in and they had to go first. I was to wait for a slot next week. Great. Sunday morning at 2 AM that changed. That was when I called again for a nurse because of the same pain. This time they had to raise the nitro up to 240 on a 300 scale. I was out of time.
At 530 AM they performed open heart surgery and completed a triple bypass. I won’t go into the details because it’s a helluva surgery. It took me weeks to get back to work and months to feel myself again. I feel fine today and that’s six years later. Thanks to the doctors at MGH.
But that’s not the important part. After the very first incident in a business presentation of all places, on an otherwise unremarkable powerpoint slide was a quote by a Jesuit Priest that struck me like nothing ever had or has since. I don’t remember the quote but I bought one of his books and was hooked.
What he essentially said was that everyone is born enough and born happy. Society shows up and infects us with false beliefs that we’re not enough and therefore we lose sight of our happiness. To regain happiness, he said, we don’t have to add anything or do anything, it’s already inside us. All we have to do is to drop our false beliefs. I’ve spent almost a decade at this point figuring out how to do that. It’s not easy, but the results are beyond words.
I was left with a huge appreciation that my life is not finite and is very precious. I was also left with a passion to apply my engineering skills, life experience and hard wired curiosity to figure out how to wake other people up to the reality that all is well with the world, we just don’t see it. We are already enough, we just don’t know it yet.
I now feel I’m ready to launch the next phase of my career by introducing the world to another way of looking at life. I’m starting with the Blindside video series to help people understand how their minds can get them into trouble and what to do about it. In time I will also offer a course to give people the opportunity to transform their lives though building skills to be successful in difficult conversations.
The impact so far has been remarkable... business owners that didn't have hope for the future, on the verge of financial ruin, turned their company around in less than two years, increased net income 20 points, reduced crushing debt to zero, increased cash to 20% of sales and built a seven month backlog in orders.
A young adult who smoked three packs of cigarettes a week quit without trying and a woman who suffered debilitating panic attacks no longer has a trace of them.
As the leader of a summertime high school mission trip for 160 young adults and chaperones, I've helped enable many lasting personal transformations.
It all started when I left a 20 year career in chemicals and a life near Philadelphia and started a new job as President of an aerospace and defense start-up outside Boston.
Within six months of starting my new job I suffered a brief bout of pneumonia that left me with what felt like two kabob skewers stabbing my chest near my heart when I walked quickly. It took six weeks to figure out that without family history or anything medically wrong my Widowmaker artery was plugged 90%.
The Widowmaker artery or Left Anterior Descending artery, is on the outside of your heart muscle and is one in which if you have a heart attack there and blood flow stops, so much heart muscle dies that you can’t be paddled back to life with an AED or with chest compressions.
An outpatient stent placement the day after the stress test fixed this problem and back to work I went, no restrictions and no heart damage. That lasted for fourteen months and on an anniversary trip I noticed that a single kabob skewer was back each time I walked quickly. The cardiac interventionist went back in and found the same artery was now blocked 95%.
Another stent was put partially inside the first one to make one longer stent and that solved the problem. Back to work I went with no restrictions. I felt great. In fact I decided next year to get in shape for a local triathlon. That worked okay for a while.
One night while I was working out doing burpees, a combination push up and jumping jack, I went up on a push up and immediately felt funny. From that point forward and in less than twenty minutes, a police car, an ambulance and a fire truck were at my door to respond to the heart attack I was having.
The emergency room cardiologist went in and found that the same spot was ok but a blood clot had formed on the end of the stent and that had come loose and plugged up two neighboring arteries to 99%, hence the heart attack. That doctor sucked out the clots and sent me on my way with a green light.
This time I dutifully did cardiac rehab with the geriatric crew but as the weeks wore on I began to feel a new odd bilateral neck pain that grew slowly in pain level. After traveling for business to Oklahoma and Missouri and working out in the hotel gyms feeling this pain, I scheduled a visit with my new cardiologist at Mass General Hospital.
He had me take a stress test Monday and was to see me on Wednesday for a consult. I failed the stress test. When the Doctor came into the examining room Wednesday he sat down, opened my file and in three seconds said that I was to be on an operating table in the next thirty minutes for a catheterization to see what was wrong.
They found that the two neighboring arteries were blocked again and to 99% and the Widowmaker was now plugged to 60%. My doctor said that I was not allowed to leave the hospital until I had a triple bypass. I was 47 years old.
Since I was stable, I was to have the surgery Sunday, Mother’s Day. Because of the blockages I was on a nitroglycerin drip to help thin my blood and keep my arteries open. Nice stuff but don’t get out of bed because you’ll pass out. That worked until Saturday morning at 2 AM when I called for a nurse because my tell tale pains were back and strong. They upped the nitro to 140 on a 300 scale from about 40.
Saturday afternoon they said other more critical people were coming in and they had to go first. I was to wait for a slot next week. Great. Sunday morning at 2 AM that changed. That was when I called again for a nurse because of the same pain. This time they had to raise the nitro up to 240 on a 300 scale. I was out of time.
At 530 AM they performed open heart surgery and completed a triple bypass. I won’t go into the details because it’s a helluva surgery. It took me weeks to get back to work and months to feel myself again. I feel fine today and that’s six years later. Thanks to the doctors at MGH.
But that’s not the important part. After the very first incident in a business presentation of all places, on an otherwise unremarkable powerpoint slide was a quote by a Jesuit Priest that struck me like nothing ever had or has since. I don’t remember the quote but I bought one of his books and was hooked.
What he essentially said was that everyone is born enough and born happy. Society shows up and infects us with false beliefs that we’re not enough and therefore we lose sight of our happiness. To regain happiness, he said, we don’t have to add anything or do anything, it’s already inside us. All we have to do is to drop our false beliefs. I’ve spent almost a decade at this point figuring out how to do that. It’s not easy, but the results are beyond words.
I was left with a huge appreciation that my life is not finite and is very precious. I was also left with a passion to apply my engineering skills, life experience and hard wired curiosity to figure out how to wake other people up to the reality that all is well with the world, we just don’t see it. We are already enough, we just don’t know it yet.
I now feel I’m ready to launch the next phase of my career by introducing the world to another way of looking at life. I’m starting with the Blindside video series to help people understand how their minds can get them into trouble and what to do about it. In time I will also offer a course to give people the opportunity to transform their lives though building skills to be successful in difficult conversations.
