At 71, this Sacramento heart attack survivor is running a half-marathon — with his doctor
Karanjit Singh and William Wong playfully needled each other on a phone call this week, one accusing the other of having egged him into running this Sunday’s Urban Cow half-marathon in Sacramento.
Singh is a doctor, a Dignity Health cardiologist in fact, and Wong, his patient. In their jousting, though, they sounded like friends.
The 71-year-old Wong survived a heart attack and quintuple bypass in 2013 and soon after another cardiac episode that required a stent. An avid runner since his 20s, Wong said either his genes or his eating habits — noshing on jumbo bags of corn chips from Costco — likely caused the troubles with his ticker.
He knew he had to stay on top of his heart health, so when he left suburban Detroit’s frosty winters for Sacramento’s warmer climes in 2017, he signed on as a patient of Singh’s. He has since put the cardiologist through his paces, persistently asking for tests and checkups.
“Mr. Wong is a lovely man, but he’s very persuasive,” said Singh, eliciting a chuckle from Wong. He “believes that, if his running time drops, it’s because his heart is not functioning right. This man has bugged me since 2017, and I’ve now done numerous stress tests on him to prove that his heart is OK.”
The doctor, 59, said he decided to take a different tack to show Wong that he could have confidence in the health of his heart this year, offering to run a half-marathon with his patient.
“It was one of those moments,” Singh said. “I looked at (Mr. Wong), and he looked at me, and he just jumped on it and said, ‘Will you run with me?’ I said, ‘Absolutely, 100%, I’ll run with you.’ And that’s how it started.”
The offer meant a great deal to Wong.
“Dr. Singh talked me into doing this. I’m not going to take 100% credit. No way. I do need to say that I tell Dr. Singh that I’ll be 72 soon, and I’ve seen a lot of doctors in my time, but I’ve never had any doctor invite me to any physical events or join any activity like this. And, Dr. Singh’s response, tongue-in-cheek maybe, was, ‘Well, I’m not any doctor.’ ... I 100% agree.”
Singh was so inspired by the idea of running with one of his patients that he decided to see whether others would want to join them. He wrote a message on a whiteboard in his office, inviting patients to run with their doctor.
Fourteen other patients signed up for the Urban Cow half-marathon, and two other people from the Dignity Health team did as well. Everyone will do it at their own pace, but Singh has invited them to his home on Saturday for a pre-race dinner.
How a heart doctor stays healthy
Singh, who also swims and bicycles as part of his weekly exercise regimen, said he’s also making plans to do events with patients who regularly partake in those sports.
Even in his personal life, Singh said, he has always tried to model healthy choices. As a physician, he knew that the calorie-rich US diet was leading to increased rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Then he read an article about how the US diet also was causing girls to hit puberty at earlier and earlier ages, increasing their risk of breast cancer.
He had two daughters and a son and wanted them to live long, healthy lives, and he felt he had to set an example for them. He gave up meat and adopted a vegetarian diet in 2003.
“I am a big proponent of a whole-food ,plant-based diet,” Singh said. “Now that doesn’t make you bulletproof, but it improves your chances of survival and disease regression in many cases. ... These are very important things very integral to your overall health.”
Singh also returned to the exercise of running, something he had enjoyed as a child. He completed a marathon annually for about 10 years, polishing off the California International Marathon here in the Sacramento region in 2011.
It makes sense that a cardiologist would take up this sport. Research has found that running on a regular basis reduces the risk of heart disease and helps to prevent blood clots in the arteries and blood vessels. Walking, swimming and cycling offer similar benefits.
Singh had success at home getting his children to adopt heart-healthy habits — recently completing a half-marathon with his daughter — that he has also encouraged his patients to make lifestyle changes that would help to keep them healthy.
“Medicine is a calling,” said Singh, who practices at Dignity’s Spanos Heart & Vascular Center, “and ... you have to treat your patients as you would treat your family.”
Running farther at 71
Since Singh and Wong agreed on June 3 to do the Urban Cow half-marathon, Wong has been testing out his heart in a new way. Rather than focusing just on how fast he is running, he has been focusing on how far he can run.
“When Dr. Singh approached me with running a half-marathon, I said, ‘Boy, the longest I’ve run was a 10K since my heart attack. I thought that was my limit,’” Wong said. “I wasn’t real confident I would be able to do it, but I persisted.”
Wong pushed himself, “as runners tend to do,” he said. He did seven miles, eight miles, 10 miles, and he now has run the 13.1 miles required for a half-marathon twice on his own.
“I know I can do the distance,” he said. “I feel confident about it.”
Wong’s son Michael is flying to Sacramento Saturday from New York. An avid cyclist, he’s taken up running so that he can jog alongside his father at the Urban Cow event.
As Singh saw patients, Dignity workers and even patients’ relatives sign up, he began to realize that this event was going to be just as special as the moment he and Wong agreed to do it.
“A lot of my patients become my friends, and I joke with them openly that, at some point, I think I should be paying you to come and see me rather than being the other way around,” Singh said. “This was one of those moments.”
