MARSHALL, Mich. — Bryan Miller said he remembers the night when he knew he had a serious heart problem. He took his friend out to dinner and noticed that it started racing rapidly. He said he’s always had a “funky flutter” with his heart. However it raced for most of night and did not slow down.
“I went to the hospital and they told me I had afib [or Atrial Fibrillation],” said Miller who was a volunteer fireman for 28 years in Calhoun County. “They gave me medication for it. It came down after 10-12 hours.”
Since that night in the Spring of 2017, Miller has been dealing with afib off and on. He described it as a heart condition where the top part of the heart isn’t in-sync with the bottom heart and it results in a type of arrhythmia. During the last year, it’s gotten progressively worse.
“My heart rate would race up as high as 180 beats a minute,” Miller said. “[It] feels like you’re running the Boston Marathon sitting still and the last episode I had it went on for about five days.”
That was last week in early December, he said. During the episode he first went to Oaklawn Hospital in Marshall seeking help. However, they immediately transported him to Borgess in Kalamazoo.
“I couldn’t tell you the doctors name but he just said 'we’re going to take care of this,'” Miller said. “'We’re going to go see if we can get a lab open.'”
Within three hours he was on an operating table, he said. While he was in the hospital recovering he missed his 9-year-old daughter’s birthday. That was hard. He wanted to be there for her but couldn’t.
“As I’m leaving, on the bed, I come back in after I changed, there was two pair of pajamas,” Miller said. “One of the nurses bought it for my little girl.”
That eased the pain a little and made him smile, he said. However the medical bills he accrued was frightening. With the emergency visits, constant ambulance rides, medication and operation, Miller said he was $100,000 in debt.
“It gets overwhelming ,” Miller said while looking down at the stack of bills on his kitchen table. “Half of these, if you look, they’re not even open. All it’s going to do is get me depressed. [I] don’t open it because I know I can’t pay it.”
He also doesn’t have health insurance, he said. According to Miller, since he earns $25,000 working O’Reilly Auto Parts he's been told he doesn’t qualify for assistance.
“I’m in hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills from this,” Miller said. “I’m still paying bills from my stroke in 2014.”
That’s when he medically retired from being a volunteer firefighter. It was his passion for close to three decades, working in seven different departments in Calhoun County.
“As a firefighter, and everything I do, you’re just committed to helping people,” Miller said. “To ask somebody for help, it’s, it’s a really really tough thing to do.”
However, he’s doing it. He recently created a GoFundMe page in hopes that the community he’s helped over the years, will help him in return.
“There’s no way I’d ever raise enough money to cover it,” Miller said. “I’m trying to get back on my feet.”
***If you'd like to help him out, click here for his GoFundMe page. ***
