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Pali Momi Team Delivers Lifesaving Emergency Heart Care for West Oʻahu Father

Published Oct. 4, 2023

Father and mother smiling on a golf course with their daughter.

On March 24, 2022, Michael Cravalho was feeling under the weather and thought he was just coming down with a bad case of the flu, so he tried sleeping off the symptoms.

A long-time diabetic, Michael decided to check his blood pressure and found it was extremely low. His wife rushed him to the Emergency Department at Pali Momi Medical Center.

Once admitted, a routine electrocardiogram (EKG) revealed that Michael had been having a massive heart attack for 15 hours. Michael was immediately rushed to Pali Momi’s Cardiac Catheterization Lab, where Interventional Cardiologist Dr. Sanah Christopher placed a stent in his heart to open one of two blocked arteries.

Michael's diabetes added to the complexity of his case, as the condition affected his kidneys' ability to filter out waste from his blood.

Stent placement procedures require contrast dye to visualize and guide the stent into the heart. Although necessary, there is the potential risk of damage to the kidneys from the dye.

In Michael's case, this was a concern due to the possibility of permanent renal failure.

All this considered, the Pali Momi team carefully monitored Michael and allowed his body to recover before undergoing a second procedure to place another stent in his heart.

Thankfully, Michael recovered quickly and avoided permanent damage to his kidneys and heart.

Today, Michael is healthy and continues doing the things he loves – playing drums for his church and going golfing with his wife and 10-year-old daughter.


Watch the video below for Michael's full story and to hear from Michael, his family and Dr. Christopher about this inspiring story of hope.

View transcript
[music]
Hilina means to believe in to have faith to trust. Took us a long time to have her she was one of those kids that we had to fight and believe and pray for every day.
But we definitely love to golf together that's something that Michael has introduced us to and so now we do it as a family.
For selfish reasons it's so that I can go golf whenever I want to just bring them along. Every minute that you get to spend with your family and with your friends is precious and you know that tomorrow's not guaranteed. I think people don't like to face the reality that medically something's wrong with you. Tomorrow makes one year since everything happened. That morning I thought I was just sick. I would sleep for like three hours get up for 15 minutes and go back to bed.
I did all the checks the COVID tests and everything and nothing was wrong, and I said "okay, well you want to go to the doctors?" "No" "Okay."
I think she pressed me another few hours later and she's like you need to think about going to the doctors and so I was like all right, fine, let's just go.
When Michael came in he originally just thought he had bad indigestion it had been going on for 13 to 14 hours, but we always do an EKG just to make sure that it's not a heart attack.
I think it was about 20 seconds into the reading, and his face went from happy to like oh my gosh something is about to happen and I'm like oh this can't be good.
He was having a STEMI which means massive heart attack. It's a blockage in your heart where you're not getting oxygen to that part of your heart and it could be fatal and deadly.
At that point I told him, "You know, I was just going to sleep it off tonight" and they said, "If you had gone to bed tonight you probably wouldn't have woken up tomorrow." So, it finally hit me that oh my gosh I could die.
Michael had a hundred percent blockage in an artery that provides blood flow to the heart. Time is of the essence that really the earlier that we treat this the more likelihood that they will have recovery from this heart attack.
My whole life flashed before my eyes of what life would be without him. I just lost my dad to this; I'm not losing my husband to this. This can't happen. I looked at him and I said please don't die I can't do this again.
Our angiogram and the treatment involves opening up the artery restoring the blood flow and then using a stent to keep the artery open so that it can continue to have blood flow and recover.
Immediately when they cleared it out and then they put the stents in my whole being changed. I felt better I was like, oh, something's different. 
Michael's procedure went great. We were able to open up the artery he did extremely well during the case.
I see him being rolled out in the gurney he's awake and I said, "Are you alright?" and he's like "Yup!"
I was still there for a couple more days while they monitored and made sure everything was okay.
I'm proud of the care that we gave him, I'm proud that we were able to give him a second chance at life.
The one thing that really stood out to me about Pali Momi was the staff and everybody who made me feel like they cared about me; they cared about my health, and they cared about me getting better.
We just want to show that what Pali Momi can do to make them feel like we got them they're in good hands
It's treating them like family, and I think that the more you treat them as a family and as a community I think that overall leads people to have better recovery and also to become more aware of their own health.
If I had all the doctors and nurses in one room that helped me that day, I would just say, "Thank you. I survived because of all that you do I'm truly blessed for your choice to be in the profession that you're in."
[Music]

On March 24, 2022, Michael Cravalho was feeling under the weather. He thought he was just coming down with a bad case of the flu, but when he checked his blood pressure, he found it was extremely low. His wife rushed him to the Emergency Department at Pali Momi Medical Center. Once admitted, a routine EKG revealed that Michael had been having a massive heart attack for 15 hours. He was immediately rushed to Pali Momi’s Cardiac Catheterization Lab for emergency surgery. Watch the video to learn more about Michael’s inspiring story and find out how he’s doing today.

The Hawaiʻi Pacific Health Heart Centers are home to a distinguished team of expert cardiologists who are setting the bar for cardiovascular care and cutting-edge technology for heart services in Hawaiʻi. Our Heart Centers brings together four medical centers – Kapiʻolani, Pali Momi, Straub Benioff and Wilcox – that work together to diagnose and treat the full spectrum of heart and vascular conditions for all patients, from infants to those with advanced disease. Our faculty and attending physicians provide deep expertise across multiple specialties and conditions from congenital heart disease, women’s heart health, structural and coronary heart disease, arrhythmia, hypertension and cardiac rehabilitation.

Learn more about cardiovascular care in Hawaiʻi on our Hawaiʻi Pacific Health Heart Centers webpage.

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