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Nothing to Play Around With
On a cold, rainy Saturday morning World Champion Pro Stock Motorcycle tuner George Bryce was enjoying a quiet morning at home with his wife Jackie and their daughter Julie. In the matter of a few moments, his life took a very scary and unexpected turn. Because of a very unusual set of circumstances, Bryce found himself at the mercy of modern medicine, and suddenly racing was the least of his concerns. Bryce had suffered a mild heart attack. Bryce was probably shocked more than anyone else that this had happened to him.
“It was one of the things where they say it’s probably not what you’ve been doing lately but what you’ve done in the last 10 or 20 years that creates problems,” Bryce said. “I didn’t realize that I had a blockage and that it may have been growing or becoming more of a problem over time. I thought I was in great shape and I thought I was feeling great but I wasn’t, because now I feel better then I did. I eat well, I exercise, I don’t smoke, I’m very active , I’m a good size person - not a likely candidate. That made a big impact on a lot of people who know me because I never would have made their top 100 heart attack potential list.” Heart attack. Two of the most dreaded words in the English language and the number one killer in the world today A heart attack is not just for the elderly or extremely overweight. George Bryce is living proof of that. a
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“Everyone knows someone they think will have a heart attack just because of their lifestyle or their physical size. I’m not blocked-up, I’m not clogged-up, I don’t have backed-up arteries. I had a build-up inside the wall of one of the arteries. It slowly but surly built-up into a restriction like a speed bump in a parking lot. Last Saturday morning I was at home resting, Jackie and I were just talking and it ruptured. Of course it started bleeding from the vessel into the rupture and it clotted. When it clotted shut that is when I had the heart attack because it cut all the blood off. It was a very, very big pressure on my chest. It felt like my little Julie was sitting on my chest; it was very hard to breath and then I could feel like somebody taking a pencil and poking me in the left arm every now and then. Since I’m a mechanic and an engine tuner I always think if something’s not right or different I want to find out why. I told Jackie we need to go to the hospital and see about this. So, I called my local doctor, I have his cell number, and he said go right to the hospital right now, do not pass go – go right to the emergency room and I’ll meet you there. This is a rainy Saturday morning – we go right there and I think I he said the key word was chest pain, so we go and say I’m having chest pain and they jump like the President just showed up. They took me straight back and put three IV’s in me, put the little oxygen in my nose, put EKG’s all over me and started monitoring and giving shots and stuff. According to the EKG, I was definitely having some heart trouble.” Even then heart problems were the furthest thing from his mind.
Living a healthy lifestyle, being young and in good physical shape, Bryce
felt he too was immune from heart problems. Although he was in the
center of medical chaos, a heart attack had not initially come to mind. With the diagnosis in place, the dramatic scene had only begun for Bryce and his family. Bryce was quickly ushered to a special center, several miles away, where they could treat the cause of his heart attack and hopefully prevent another one from happening. a
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“They called me a two-ton truck, a heart truck. They sent it over from Albany, Georgia, about a 45 minute ride and they ride 85 – 90 MPH, and its pouring rain all the way to Americus. They pick me up at the Sumter Regional Hospital, put me in the heart truck and then drove it break-neck speeds back to Albany in the pouring rain. I think I was more nervous about that then anything just knowing how fast we were going. All the guys in the truck knew of me and had motorcycles and some of them frequent discussion forums I’m on and were really surprised to see me. “I was surprised to find out they were all motorcycle enthusiasts. The heart doctor in Albany also has a Ducati 916 Monster, so he’s a motorcycle fan. They all have Harleys and Ducati’s and stuff like that. So – we at least had some common ground to talk about. The interesting thing was that when I got to Albany, I found out the Cath Lab and Heart Unit only works Monday through Friday. They were going to stabilize me and make me comfortable until Monday morning when the Cath crew could come in and work on me. “So – I told the heart surgeon ‘it’s raining outside, its cold, he’s not riding his motorcycle, he’s not playing golf – call him and see if he’d be interested in coming in.’ I was like Larry the Cable Guy, we need to Git-R-Done. The doctor thought it wouldn’t hurt to call. He came back to my room about 5 minutes later and said, ‘He’s home, he’s bored and he’s sober – and he’s on his way.’ They called a crew, there are four other people involved, and the doctor came in and said, ‘Okay, you are going to make a Cath Lab visit. There is nothing going on today, it’s a good day to do it. My crew is downstairs turning on machines, turning on lights, warming things up and we are going to go ahead and prep you.’
“They rolled me down to the Cath Lab; it was a ghost town. The lights were off, it was cold and nobody was there except for these four people. The doctor told me they would have everything done in about 35 minutes, so they told Jackie to stay right there in the little waiting room and wait, we’d be right back. What was really the most interesting part for me was I was able to watch the whole thing on a real-time monitor. They put a 3mm tube in the femoral artery on the right side of my groin and then they put dye in. Then they x-ray your chest with the dye in and look at everything. You can see it in real time. Then they run a camera up in there and look at everything. I could see that all my pipes were clear and that my heart was good. But I had one restriction in one artery and it cleared that. They put a really neat stainless steel stint about one-inch long. He told me that it was some kind of super Naval weaponry alloy and that it was a special type of stint. It’s new and has medication within it and takes a while to administer the medication. "What it does is keep you from having a rejection opportunity because your body always fights off foreign objects. This particular stint is so well accepted by the human body that I never even got one degree of temperature through the whole process. Usually you get a little rise in temperature when you start trying to fight a foreign object. As soon as he put the stint in and expanded it with the inflatable bladder I felt better. I was back in my room 45 minutes later, and they sent me home the next day. I was able to go home before the Cath Lab was even open.” a
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With Bryce and his family facing one of the scariest moments in his life, he struggled with a multitude of emotions and fears. Although Bryce had a swift diagnosis, treatment and now good prognosis, he was still battling the mental impact of the ordeal. “I was very disappointed,” Bryce said. “I guess the doctor could tell that. He came back to me and told me that if you ate like you were supposed to every meal and you were a decathlete, or you raced with Lance Armstrong or any of that stuff, this could still happen because I have a family history. My mother and my father both had heart problems and I buried both of them. I have to be more aware about what is happening with my body and I have to take more preventative efforts to make sure. I’m going to maintain a better diet instead of just a good one. I’m going to exercise more diligently then I did, not just a casual exercise regimen. I have more purpose now. Two things really struck me. When they were driving me 85 – 90 mph in the pouring rain and they had all the horns and sirens going, well, I’ve always wondered what that would feel like and now I know. That is a really, really, really crappy feeling. “I started to think about my life and what was important and what wasn’t important; all my commitments and promises and priorities were displaced. They were the wrong priorities and wrong commitments. They were all business-related. Reality soon set-in. If they unplug my show right now, the world would still carry on in every way regardless whether if I fulfilled my commitments or not. My wife Jackie was following me in the car and my little girl was with her Grandmother at home doing fine watching a movie. It was pretty sobering to realize that I needed to rearrange my priorities. So, the second thing that struck me was when the doctor said I had a heart attack and wanted to fix it as soon as possible to minimize the damage. At three o’clock the next morning the nurse came in to check all my vitals and the equipment and said, ‘you get something a lot of people don’t get,’ and I said, ‘what is that,‘ and he said ‘a second chance.’
“That really struck a chord with me. I did, I got a second chance. He and I talked for a long time; he is a really good guy – he’s been a male nurse for about 12 years and he’s had a lot of experience with people in my shoes and it was very interesting.” “The fear did loom very large for Jackie and me. The way we were squeezing each other's hands and trying not to cry – before we knew where we stood, my biggest fear was once they go in and look, they would find some really crappy news. That was my biggest scare. You just don’t know what you’re going to get. We have so may friends that are 45 – 55 years old, who are scared to death right now about this and they don’t want to know about it. When they strap you down and plug everything into you, you are getting ready to find out and that is a scary moment. "The message I learned and want to share is if your engine was making some funny noises or had some push rod trouble or rocker arm trouble, you’d tear into it immediately and fix it. You wouldn’t run it one more run down the race track. I would have held it on the rev limiter until it would blow-up if wasn’t for Jackie Bryce. She is the one who made me back-off the throttle. “I’m telling you, men think that it’s macho to disregard those signs and not go to the doctor. That is not macho, it’s chicken and I want to be quoted as that. I think it’s macho to go to the doctor and let the doctor tell you that you are in good shape or bad shape. It is just chicken if you don’t go. My deal here was that I was fortunate. I was home, I responded to the first signals and signs, I was fortunate enough to have Jackie here making sure that I did right and I went to see my doctor and he said that I had trouble. It was ten o’clock in the morning when I felt bad and it was five o’clock in the afternoon when I was in my bed at the hospital already fixed. I have no damage.” a
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Healing his body and mind is top priority. However, Bryce also wanted to calm the nerves of his family, friends, employees and fans. “When I got home on Monday, I went to work on Monday morning. All of my people, my family of team members at my store were so surprised to see me; I was so proud to see all of them. I hugged everyone and I wanted them to see me in the flesh to see that I am okay and that I was doing really well so they wouldn’t be worried. I can only imagine the feeling when you are in a growing business, at the rate we are growing, with the impact we are making in the industry, for the leader to go down with a heart attack would have to be a really crappy feeling for them. So – I wanted them to know that I do feel better. I want to say right here on Competition Plus that I was overwhelmed in a very good way with the response, support, well-wishes and prayers. I had so many e-mail’s that people sent that I was included their prayers – what a wonderful feeling that is. I never knew how powerful that was or how it feels because I had never been in those shoes.” Despite having a life-threatening and life-changing event just days prior, Bryce was out at the track tuning just as quickly as he was back to the office. During a road trip, Bryce tuned Chip Ellis and Matt Smith to a few wins and a runner-up at the AHDRA in Gainesville. They also set a whopping seven records and qualified on the pole. “It was an unbelievable weekend. It really is good medicine for me to go to the race track. So I got in my motor home and stayed at the race track Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday after my heart attack. And I enjoyed it a ton!” With a “second chance” new lease on life, loving family and friends and a sport he has a passion for, the sky is the limit for Bryce. With a fully funded team of Buells to race the NHRA POWERade Tour, Bryce is excited for the coming season. a d v e r t i s e m e n t
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“We signed a big deal with Drag Specialties, which is the mail order giant in the motorcycle industry. That’s a real feather in our cap. It feels similar to our Winston deal in the day, when we were sponsored by team Winston. It adds a lot of legitimacy to our team and our category and speaks volume to the power of the marketing capabilities we have in our NHRA POWERade Pro Stock Motorcycle category. That definitely feels different than last year - trying to figure a way to pay for it all. We also signed Matt Smith for a whole year now sponsored by Torco Racing Fuels with the Skull Gear Pro Stock Motorcycle, so we have both teams funded for the first time in years. We have been doing a lot of preparation in order to be ready for the Gators.” A heart attack later and toting a few meds in hand, Bryce is optimistic on the upcoming NHRA POWERade Pro Stock Motorcycle season and more importantly on his life. For now, Bryce is happy to just be alive and doing what he loves.
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