“I was alarmed, but I was not scared,” he answers when I ask Jeff Rickard if he thought he was going to die as he was experiencing a heart attack last November.
The 58-year-old is best known in the industry and to audiences for his hosting roles on ESPN Radio, SiriusXM and The Fan in Indianapolis, where he also serves as PD. Those that know him personally see an athlete, every bit as in tune with his body as Victor Oladipo, T.Y. Hilton, or anyone else he covers. It can honestly be intimidating to hear him talk about.
Rickard knew what was happening virtually right away. He had never had a heart attack before, but had read enough and knows his body well enough to recognize the symptoms and not dismiss them as “no big deal.”
“I know what it feels like to be out of breath because you’ve pushed it to the limit. I know what it feels like when your lungs are searing and your legs are burning because you are just out of oxygen. This is different than that ever felt. This was just, everything was going numb and there was a pain in my chest that I had just never felt before.”
As he laid on the gurney, ready to be wheeled back to the operating room, Rickard told his wife “Don’t worry. Today’s not my day”. And she believed him.
“She just deep in her heart thought that even as I was sitting there on the table, with no heart beat basically, she was just upbeat,” he says. “She said she just knew it wasn’t the day.”
“It wasn’t the day” is right. Rehab may have been cut short by COVID-19, but just months after his discharge from the hospital, Rickard was already asking doctors and physical therapists about when he could get back on his bike. The only answer he got from them was “when it’s time, we’ll know”.
What other answer could they give him? These doctors and therapists had never seen a 58 year old man recover from a heart attack and want to get back to the level of physical activity a body like his was accustomed to. They didn’t know what to say. There was no precedent.
That desire to be active showed up in Rickard very quickly. He says after his surgery, he was out of commission for about three full days, completely unconscious. It took another 24-48 hours before he felt mentally sharp. In Jeff’s mind, that meant it was time to start doing some work.
“I started responding to email that I would see come in,” he told me. “Our operations director David Wood called me up and goes ‘Hey, you’re on medical leave. If I keep seeing you send emails out, I’m gonna shut your email down. Take care of yourself and when the doctors say you’re ready to come back, then we’ll have you back’.”
Everything you’ve read up till now may lead you to believe that Rickard was anxious about not being able to have eyes on his staff and his hands on clocks. It would be a safe assumption. The guy is an achiever.
You would be wrong though. Jeff had no problem turning off the work side of his brain. He was at ease knowing that the right people are in the building at Emmis Communications and that The Fan has a staff of professionals that know what is expected of them.
It would be nearly eight weeks before Rickard stepped back into the building. He said there were certain physical things he knew he’d have to be able to do in order to handle the stress of a morning show and programming duties. He was in very different shape physically when he left the hospital than he was when he came in.
“I couldn’t walk from one end of the hall to the other at that point in time without losing my breath,” Rickard says. “So, when I started to get some physical ability back, by that I mean just being able to know that I could drive myself to the store or walk around the block, I started to think that I can certainly go back to work.”
Getting back to work was one thing. Now Rickard had to figure out how he was going to get back on his bike. He had to figure out how he could push himself without overdoing it. Remember, even as you are reading this, the guy isn’t even a full year removed from his heart attack.
He decided to keep the distance, but he wouldn’t concern himself with speed.
“My longest ride this year, which I was pretty proud of given when and where I did it, was probably in late May. I did an 82 mile ride.”
Oh, no big deal. Just using your own physical strength to ride roughly the same distance between Tampa and Orlando while still not at 100%.
For cyclists, there is a very easy way to measure recovery and physical ability. The athletes measure their power output in watts. Right now, Rickard says he is at about 80-85% of where he was before his heart attack. Of course he wants that number to eventually grow, but just getting there is a big deal.
“You lose all confidence in your body. You’re thinking ‘I want to do this, but can my heart handle this? Am I asking too much of myself?’”
The Cardiac Rehab Center at IU Health had Rickard under supervision. For three months, Rickard showed up at the center three times per week. He would be hooked up to an EKG machine while a therapist monitored his exercise. It is how he measured when the time was right to push himself just a little harder.
What about his work life? Has the experience of a heart attack and the subsequent recovery process changed the way Jeff Rickard runs The Fan?
He said that getting back to work was easier to look at as less involved.
“This whole approach for me, maybe naturally, was like coming back from a knee injury in some regards. It’s certainly different, but at some point, you just get back on your bike and you go”.
He expresses more appreciation for his staff. He makes sure mentally and emotionally they are doing well and putting as much focus on their home lives as they are on their work lives.
Don’t take that to mean Jeff has turned into a pushover. He is still “going to be a stickler to make sure we do things the right way and how we do it at our place,” as he says before noting that he couldn’t be happier with the staff he has in place right now. They made it easy for him to be away from the station for more than two months, so of course they have made it easy for him to expect his and his bosses’ standards will be met.
Rickard has been going pretty hard since returning to work. He was fortunate enough to get a family vacation in in early March right before the COVID-19 pandemic made quick work of all of our plans. Since then, he has only had two days off and those were spent at a hospital, undergoing a bevy of tests. It may not have been a relaxing two days, but Rickard says he knows they are a necessary part of life now.
When we spoke, he was enjoying his first extended time at home. While he is enjoying not listening to the radio and clearing his head of political conversations, he says he still thinks about the next person that will have a heart attack, because if they are anything like he was before last November, they probably aren’t thinking about it themselves.
“I never saw it coming. It’s not always your diet and your lifestyle,” he says, stressing the importance of knowing your risk factors. “Sometimes your body is just genetically predisposed to stuff and genetics are undefeated, man.”
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
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