On Sept. 30 at the beginning of the school day Jay Young, a Social Studies teacher at Wenatchee High School, had a minor heart attack but is now on the mend.

He was sitting at his desk, looking over class assignments when he noticed something out of the ordinary. “I was sitting here, working, then I got all sweaty and constricted,” said Young. “My chest hurt like crazy.”

Young arrived at the hospital around 8:40 a.m. and was on the operating table by 9:15. “The whole reason the damage was so minimal was because I got there so fast,” said Young. “I was really lucky.”

There is now a stent, a small mesh tube used to treat narrow or weak arteries, in one of Young’s arteries. The purpose of the stent is to restore blood flow and prevent bursting of any arteries that are under strain.

The scare of Young’s heart attack forced him to cut down on his Coke, cheese, hotdogs, and other fast foods. He can only have two grams of sodium per day. “It’s pathetic, really,” said Young, who is a big Coke fan. Young has also signed up for exercise classes at the hospital, intending to become a “healthy, green, mean, fighting machine.”

Young is happy with the change. He believes it is for the better and even though it wasn’t a pleasant experience, he now will be taking better care of himself.

Even when being wheeled to the operating room, Young held true to his devotion to his students. “The doctor wheeling me in asked me what was on my mind,” said Young. “I told him I really needed to do my lesson plans – how could I leave the kids hanging? The doctor told me it could wait. Still, my students were my number one concern.”

Young is now doing well and has returned to teaching, saying that he “feels great.”

“It’s easy to make excuses, but when something this scary happens, you don’t want excuses,” said Young. “You want to be around. I’m not ready to leave yet.”