Drex heart attack: The Vancouver radio host will be on the air until 2023

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Popular Vancouver radio personality Drex won’t be on the air until next year while he recovers from a heart attack that required emergency surgery.

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Drex was at home watching television after dinner last Friday when he felt a strange sensation.

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“It was really weird. I felt nauseous like I needed to vomit and have a bowel movement at the same time,” he said.

He decided to lie down and crawled to the bed. His dog, Andy, usually crawled beside him for a cuddle. But this time, his chihuahua was standing next to his bed and staring at him like something was wrong.

Then the 43-year-old began to feel tightness in his chest as if a heavy weight was crushing his heart. Alarmed, he called her husband, who was at work and could not answer. He then called a friend, who told him to hang up immediately and call 911.

Firefighters arrived at his house in about 10 minutes, Drex said, and paramedics arrived 10 minutes later. They took him to the hospital. In the emergency room, doctors did an electrocardiogram and confirmed that he was probably having a heart attack.

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“They placed a stent immediately, within 20 minutes of arriving at the ER,” Drex said. “They said we had to do it now.”

Doctors would later tell him that one of his arteries was completely blocked, while another was at 80%. Three other arteries were also clogged, but less severely and didn’t need the small mesh tubes to keep them open.

On Monday, Drex had a second stent for the artery that was 80% blocked.

The heart attack was a wake-up call, Drex said.

Ironically, on the day of his heart attack, Drex had interviewed TC Carling, president of the Canadian Foundation for Men’s Health, on his morning show on Jack 96.9. The foundation is a nonprofit group that works to improve men’s health and reduce their risk of chronic disease.

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“We were talking about how men don’t take their health seriously,” Drex said. “And, stupidly, I was one of them. I didn’t listen to my own body. I didn’t take it seriously because I’m a dude and men are stupid and I thought, ‘It won’t be anything’, but no, you’re having a fucking heart attack.

Looking back, Drex said he felt bad and lazy last year. His lifestyle and diet – “I like delicious things”, he admitted – didn’t help. He also has a family history of heart problems: his grandmother had to undergo quadruple bypass surgery and his father had to undergo triple bypass surgery.

He shared his health scare on Twitter and thanked local firefighters and paramedics for their care. But her social media post also attracted hundreds of anti-vaxxers, who blamed her heart attack on the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

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Drex has made his support for COVID science and vaccines clear in the past, calling them a public health issue. The online attacks and misinformation were “quite demoralizing”, he said. Some of the posts were vicious and malicious and led him to block numerous accounts and lock his Twitter account.

In the meantime, he urged others to take care of their health.

That’s exactly what Drex, who just married in August, plans to do. He won’t air until Jan. 3 to focus on his recovery, including getting his body used to the cocktail of heart medications he has to take and making changes to his lifestyle and diet.

“Things I like now have to be things in moderation…that’s how it should be.”

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