Home builder Keith Hoch was in his early 50s when he started to feel sluggish while building houses for his clients in and around Toms River, New Jersey. His doctor diagnosed him with a cold, then the flu. He didn't respond to treatment.
His doctor's next guess was a bacterial infection. Hoch took several rounds of antibiotics, but still didn't improve. Further testing showed his lungs were full of fluid.
The right side of his heart wasn't pumping blood well, either. Hoch had idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. It's a condition in which the heart weakens and its chambers enlarge.
His doctors weren't sure why it was happening. Hoch suspected a respiratory infection had caused it. Hoch started several medications to help his heart pump blood, and he started to regain energy.
A year later, his heart started beating erratically. He had an ablation, a procedure that destroys small areas of heart tissue to help restore the heart's regular rhythm. That same year, doctors implanted a pacemaker-defibrillator in Hoch's chest.
If his heart developed an abnormal rhythm or stopped, the device would shock it back into a normal rhythm. Over the next few years, it shocked him twice. For about the next decade, Hoch kept working and enjoying life.
He continued building houses and traveled often to fish, a hobby he embraced after childhood summers on his grandfather's boat. During that time, Hoch had three more ablations and regular cardiologist appointments, and he got a second defibrillator af.
