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Sunday, January 16, 2000
By Steve Twedt, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
If he could rewind the tape to Oct. 4, John Bagwell says, this time he wouldn't tell a soul.
When the pain in his chest started, Bagwell was driving a 73-foot International tractor-trailer loaded with canned soup, rolling 65 mph along Interstate 80, near Scranton. "It felt like someone sticking a knife in the back of my heart."
Bagwell, 37, now wishes he'd just kept going instead of returning home and spending two weeks in an intensive care unit.
His doctors have told Bagwell he is headed for a massive heart attack, whether he kept driving or not. If it happened on the road, Bagwell figured, he could have just pulled hard right on the steering wheel before losing consciousness and run into a ditch. No one would have gotten hurt but him.
Bagwell does not have a death wish. What he does have is a wife, three children and monthly payments on his pickup truck and the family house in Irwin. Like many truck drivers with serious medical conditions, he found himself caught between risking his health and losing his job.
"I'm kicking myself right now for saying a word," Bagwell said recently, his thick hands cradling a cup of restaurant coffee. "I'd rather I'd kept my mouth shut, take a massive one and take myself out. If I'd had a heart attack and died, then the family wouldn't be in a financial crunch."
Over the previous eight days, he said, he had filled out 32 job applications around the Irwin area, seeking jobs in parts departments and machine shops. "I could go to Denny's and make $6 an hour. But I'm used to making $3,000 a month." He's already months behind on payments on his pickup.
Earlier this month, after 62 applications, Bagwell landed a job with a Montgomery Ward auto repair shop, working on part salary, part commission. After months of not collecting a paycheck, though, "We won't have our heads level with the water for five months," he said. "We'll get through it, but I'm praying the [bill] collectors will be lenient enough with us."
The whole episode is taking its toll on his psyche, too. Bagwell practically grew up behind the wheel of a truck. Before he was out of high school in New Mexico, he was ferrying trucks back and forth in a truck stop. When he was old enough, he graduated to "bull wagons," or cattle trucks.
"In Texas, to get a job that paid a decent living, you had to run cross country. It's monotonous out there, and nerve-wracking. You're 76 feet long, and you're anywhere from 46,000 pounds to 130,000, depending on what you're carrying. It's like you're responsible for 35 to 40 cars, not counting the cars on either side of you and the one in your blind spot."
But he'll be the first to tell you that he loved the life. The trucker, he said, "is the last of the frontiersmen. He sees a new dawn in a new place every day. He's always looking for what's over the horizon."
Even early in his career, the 5-foot, 9-inch, 210-pound Bagwell knew he might be headed for health problems. His father had died of a heart attack at age 48; diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol all run in his family.
Nearly three years ago, while working in New Mexico, Bagwell started having "spells," in which he'd briefly lose consciousness. During one episode, he passed out while driving a loader and ran it into a wall.
After doctors implanted a pacemaker to regulate his heart rhythm, Bagwell believed -- or at least hoped -- that he'd been cured.
In August, the family moved to Irwin, where his wife, Debra, had grown up. Bagwell found trucking work right away but, during an October trip out of Pittsburgh, he felt the first sharp chest pain. It lasted five minutes, and he didn't tell anyone about it.
"I was the only one working at the time, and we couldn't afford for me to be off work."
The Oct. 4 episode -- Bagwell said doctors later determined he had had two heart attacks -- left him in a cold sweat, trying to complete his delivery while trying to keep his mind off the pain. "I kept going, but I couldn't go fast."
The delivery was late and then, because he felt so weak, he had to pay laborers, called "lumpers," $400 to unload his truck. Once that was done, Bagwell called his dispatcher and told her he needed to get home.
During the time he was hospitalized, Bagwell learned the grim diagnosis: "They flat-out told me I was going to have a massive heart attack. It's not a 'maybe.' I'm going to. What we need to do now is stave it off as long as we can."
Despite that, Bagwell said, his family physician cleared him to drive a truck again, based on tests done while he was at rest. His employer told him to first see an occupational medicine specialist, Dr. Pamela Gianni, in Scottdale. She put him on a treadmill, where his pulse raced to 200 in just one minute. He also said he felt light-headed.
Bagwell's truck driving career was over.
"This has really, really hurt us. In my lifetime, I have never been in this kind of financial stress," Bagwell said last week. The pain he has in his heart now is one that medicine cannot repair.
A heart condition ended John Bagwell's trucking career and has put a financial strain on his family. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette) 
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