Mike Amyx cuts 7-year-old Gavin McDaniel’s hair Wednesday at his barbershop downtown. Amyx is back at work after having suffered a heart attack a week ago.

Mike Amyx thought maybe a can of Coca-Cola would do the trick.

So at 5:30 on Thursday morning, he popped one open in hopes that it would help relieve “the worst heartburn” he had ever had.

It didn’t. Instead, it just woke up his wife, Marilyn, who asked him what the heck he was doing drinking Coca-Cola at 5:30 in the morning.

Amyx told her that he was experiencing chest pain, and she told him that she would call 911. Amyx — a Lawrence city commissioner and owner of a downtown barber shop — talked her out of it.

Now, Amyx freely says what every wife tries to get her husband to admit at least once.

“The biggest mistake I made that day was not listening to my wife,” Amyx said.

Six days after a heart attack put him in Lawrence Memorial Hospital, Amyx was back at work Wednesday at his barber shop. But Amyx is taking work at a slower pace, and telling people to be on the lookout for something he was not — the signs of a heart attack.

“You know, everything I thought to do on Thursday morning probably was wrong,” Amyx told his fellow commissioners at their weekly meeting on Tuesday. “I feel very fortunate.”

In addition to not heeding his wife’s advice to call 911, Amyx decided to go to work that morning. For the next three hours, he tried to convince himself the chest pain — and then the shooting pain in his arm and the profuse sweating — was something else. About 8 a.m., he drove himself to the hospital.

“That wasn’t very smart either,” he said. “We have people who will do that for you.”

Amyx, 56, has learned that the way he treated the situation was all too common. He was in denial, which medical professionals told him can be deadly.

“I just kept thinking this couldn’t be,” Amyx said. “It couldn’t be me having a heart attack. I was denying the obvious because I was having every symptom you’ve ever read about. I just chose to ignore the obvious, and that didn’t work out.”

Well, it worked out better than it could have. Amyx said he walked into LMH’s emergency room and told a staff member he was having chest pains.

“Oh my, there was a whole lot of action after that,” Amyx said. “I was being hooked up to a lot of things in a hurry.”

Amyx praised the LMH doctors and staff, who told him he was having a heart attack and had him undergoing a medical procedure to install a stent within 45 minutes of his arrival.

Hospital spokeswoman Belinda Rehmer said LMH on Oct. 1 began a program where the hospital’s heart catheterization lab has at least one doctor on call at all times to perform the procedure. Before, doctor coverage was less frequent.

Amyx said he’s glad of the change, but hopes that potential patients also will have a change in mindset.

“The big thing I want people to understand is that they could end up being the classic example, too,” Amyx said. “Hey, it may just be indigestion or it may not. There’s people that can check you out and tell you.”

Amyx said he won’t make the same mistake twice. He said he’s beginning a cardiac rehabilitation program next week, and has vowed to quit smoking.

There’s also a change of diet on tap, that will begin today as he shares a Thanksgiving turkey with his family.

“Mine will be a little less salty than normal,” Amyx said. “But it is going to taste great. It really will.”