Today’s Woman / Heart Health 2021
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DON’T PLAY Stories by Carrie Vittitoe Photos by Melissa Donald Makeup by Amber Himes
Prior to COVID-19, the leading cause of death in the United States was heart disease. Since COVID-19 has an impact on the cardiovascular system, it is even more critical now to not play games with our hearts and pay close attention to symptoms that we might normally ignore.
On the Cover: Clariese Armstrong, 73
Cover makeup by Amber May, Strandz Salon & Threadz Boutique
For years, Clariese Armstrong had a cough that would come and go, which she and her family always thought was bronchitis. While it was annoying, it never kept her from working or caring for her children or home. Eventually, though, she began to feel increasingly fatigued. “This is not right; something is wrong,” she said to herself. She went to her primary care doctor, who did an electrocardiogram (EKG) and advised her to see a cardiologist. Clariese visited Dr. Abraham Joseph at UofL Physicians. “They did all sorts of tests and told me I had had two heart attacks [of] which I was unaware,” she says. Dr. Joseph referred Clariese to cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon Dr. Brian Ganzel who recommended surgery. Clariese underwent open heart surgery to make repairs. Looking back, in addition to her cough, Clariese can now recognize signs that her heart wasn’t working properly for many years. “Sometimes I’d have profuse sweating, but it was put off on getting older and going through ‘the change,’” she says. “I didn’t realize this was my heart trying to compensate.” Following surgery, Clariese spent a short amount of time in a nursing home until she was strong enough to be back in her home and then went on to do cardiac rehab at UofL’s Healthy Lifestyle Center at Mary & Elizabeth Hospital, which she has continued doing three times a week. She admits she didn’t bounce back immediately to her old self and had to take time to regain strength. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna jump up and do this and do that.’ My body said, “Uh-uh. Girlfriend, go take that nap,” she says. Clariese credits UofL’s cardiac rehab staff with providing her exceptional, friendly care. “That group of fantastic, beautiful young people allowed me to go in and vent,” she says. “They were so encouraging. They know my name; they listen to me.”
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Her heart experience taught Clariese that as a woman she is worthy of good health and good health care by professionals. She hopes her heart story serves as a reminder of this to all Kentuckiana women. Heart Health 2021 / TodaysWomanNow.com
GAMES WITH YOUR
HEART See Joan's story on next page.
Joan Nelson Kash
Today’s Woman / Heart Health 2021
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Joan Nelson Kash, 69 In March 2014, Joan Nelson Kash was caring for her terminally ill husband, Ron, and working full-time. When she developed a stiff neck, she attributed it to the extreme amount of stress she was under. She says her neck felt like she had slept wrong. But when the stiffness worsened and she began to feel clammy, she called her daughter, Lindsay Reynolds, who is a nurse. Lindsay wanted to take her mom to the hospital, but Joan was hesitant. What changed her mind was when she felt a tingle down her left arm. “As soon as I got that, I knew it was more than a stiff neck,” Joan says. Lindsay took her mom to Norton Brownsboro Hospital, where doctors planned to give Joan a stress test the next day. However, further tests indicated she needed a cardiac catheterization and a stent. “It was 95 percent blockage,” she says.
As a result, Joan doesn’t play games when it comes to her cardiac health. She returns for a check up each year with her cardiologist and is vigilant about getting enough exercise, although the pandemic has kept her away from fitness centers. She walks her dog two to three miles every day and carries Nitrostat with her at all times. (Nitrostat is a medication that widens the blood vessels, meaning the heart doesn’t have to work as hard.) “I can’t go without it because of the ‘heart event.’ If something would happen and I’m by myself, I can at least take the Nitrostat,” she says. She retired from full-time work, which has helped eliminate a great deal of stress in her life. Sadly, Joan’s husband, Ron, passed away in June 2014 while she was doing cardiac rehabilitation. However, the heart can heal as Joan’s did, both physically and emotionally: she remarried in May 2019.
“I WAS VERY LUCKY I WAS IN A FACILITY THAT HAD [AN AED].” — CARLY FONDA
Carly Fonda, 14 Carly Fonda didn’t intend to play games with her heart, but she unknowingly did. On January 6, 2018, she was participating in a basketball tournament at Floyd Central High School in Southern Indiana. She was only 11 years old and had gone through the usual sports physicals. “She was extremely healthy from all that we knew; she had been playing sports ever since she was in the third grade,” says her mom Beth Fonda. Carly had played a morning game and took a break with friends to have lunch. When her next game started, she went on the floor to play. During the third quarter, she took a quick break because she couldn’t catch her breath but quickly went back in. “It was so weird because I’d never felt that way before,” Carly says. “I thought I was out of shape because it was after Christmas break.” When she came out of the game a second time and sat down, everything began to spin and then went black. Coming out for a break wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary, so Beth kept watching the game. “I happened to catch her best friend’s dad jumping off the bleachers [and running toward the floor],” she says. Carly had slumped over the side of the chair and fell onto a pile of backpacks. Nurses who had been in the stands quickly came to help Carly. They originally thought she might be having a seizure but soon determined that Carly was having a cardiac event and had no pulse. “She was gray,” Beth says. A fireman who was at the game asked if there was an automated external defibrillator (AED) on site,
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Heart Health 2021 / TodaysWomanNow.com
and fortunately there was. “They pulled me away from her and shocked her,” Beth says. “I just lost it and started screaming.” The shock got Carly’s heart beating normally again, and she was aware of where she was. By this time, an ambulance had arrived and she was taken to Norton Children’s Hospital in downtown Louisville. Despite running tons of tests, doctors could find nothing to explain Carly’s cardiac event, but to prevent a future emergency, they felt a pacemaker was the best option for her. Unfortunately, a pacemaker meant she would no longer be able to play sports. Doctors decided to do two final tests: a transesophageal echo (TEE) test and a cardiac catheterization. Through the cath, the doctors discovered that Carly had a rare congenital heart defect called anomalous aortic origin of a coronary artery (AAOCA) that affected her left coronary artery. In order to fix this condition, Carly would require open heart surgery, which occurred six days after her collapse on the basketball floor. She was released from the hospital 11 days after she first arrived. It took about six months for Carly to be cleared to begin playing sports again; she played her first basketball game on the one-year anniversary of her cardiac arrest. This experience has changed Carly and her family in many ways. She has decided she wants to be a cardiologist as a career, and her family has become advocates for AEDs in schools and other public venues. “I was very lucky I was in a facility that had one,” Carly says. She hopes that other schools don’t play games without having AEDs at the ready.
See Carly's story on previous page.
Carly Fonda
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Heart Health 2021 / TodaysWomanNow.com
Katie Brooks, 36 In the game of surviving cardiovascular injury, mindset is absolutely critical to being able to handle the stress that comes with life-threatening cardiac events. For Katie Brooks, a mindset focused on incremental positive improvement is essential to her overall well being, because at age 35, she suffered a dissected artery as a result of a chiropractic adjustment. That dissection led to a stroke that kept Katie in the hospital for a month during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I thought I had a pinched nerve, so I went and sought help from a chiropractor,” she says. X rays showed she had back and neck alignment issues. When she had her second alignment, she immediately knew something was wrong. “My brain felt like it was on fire. It was the most intense pain I’d ever been in in my life,” she says. “My right side slumped, and I started drooling on myself.” She was taken by ambulance to UofL Hospital, where she was given a clot buster drug. “The right side of my body wouldn’t move. Within an hour, I remember being able to slightly move my fingers,” she says. Still, the stroke had impacted her to the point that she had difficulty walking, talking, and swallowing; she still requires speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy multiple times a week. As a result of the stroke, Katie says she has developed a series of medical conditions that have required several return trips to the hospital. Prior to her stroke, she was in good physical condition and had been a caregiver for veterans, but that has become impossible at this point. “The roles have switched,” Katie says. Still, she says, despite the negative life-altering effects of her stroke, she has also become empowered. “I had to dig deep in myself,” she says. As a single mom to three children, she has had to rely more on her 18-year-old son, Kevon, for the care of his siblings, 10-year-old Kiss and 4-year-old Kasey. “[He] has been my backbone,” she says. “He’s been the person
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Heart Health 2021 / TodaysWomanNow.com
Katie Brooks
"NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE STRENGTH THAT YOU HAVE IN YOURSELF." who takes care of everything that I can’t right now. I hate putting all the responsibility on him. At first, I could afford to have caregivers here, and I did, but after all these months, your savings run out,” she says. Most people recognize that life can change on a dime, but Katie gets this in a way most others don’t. “You have to maintain your faith no matter what happens; never
underestimate the strength that you have in yourself,” she says. Before this happened, she had a lot on her plate as a business owner and single mother, but despite her physical limitations now, her spirit remains the same. “You feel like a lot of things have been taken from you. But who I am wasn’t,” she says. She knows she has come a long way from when she was first rushed to the hospital less than a year ago.
Melissa Pipes, 55 When Melissa Pipes was in her early 40s, her heart began skipping beats. Her primary care doctor did an EKG, which came back abnormal, and that led to a visit to a cardiologist and a heart catheterization. Melissa was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, the same disease that led to her mother’s death at age 55 in 1987. The cardiologist recommended that Melissa have a defibrillator implanted. Despite the defibrillator, Melissa weakened over the years. “I had no energy whatsoever,” she says, which impacted her ability to work as a teacher’s aide to special needs students in Brandenburg, Kentucky. It was hard to gather the energy to go to work; when she was able to work, she would come home exhausted and go to bed. Her ejection fraction, which measures the percentage of blood leaving the heart when it contracts, was down to 10 percent. (A normal heart’s ejection fraction ranges between 50-70 percent.) It became apparent to Melissa’s cardiologists that she needed a heart transplant. After undergoing a series of tests, her name was put on the list on March 10, 2017. Several weeks later, on Easter Sunday, Melissa’s cell phone rang. An unknown number popped up so she didn’t answer, but when it rang again from the same number she picked up. “It was Jewish Hospital calling me; they said, ‘We have a potential heart for you,’” she says. By the next morning, Melissa was undergoing transplant surgery. “They said it fit just like a puzzle piece,” Melissa says. After nine days, she was discharged and sent home. Melissa began doing cardiac rehab, but her heart took an emotional hit in July 2017 when her husband of almost three decades was killed in an ATV accident. “I had a bump in the road there, and I fought depression. That was a hard time,” she says. These days, Melissa takes two types of anti-rejection medications, has lab work done once a month, and has a heart cath once a year.
As a result of her transplant experience, Melissa has become vocal about encouraging others to put themselves on the Kentucky organ donor list. “I know it brought me closer to God. It’s given me a different outlook on life. I don’t take things for granted,” she says. Not only did Melissa personally benefit from a donation, her husband was a tissue donor. Being both the receiver and giver of a life-sustaining gift brings both joy and a feeling of responsibility. “So often I think of my donor and my donor’s family,” she says. She tries to spread the word about organ donation; “If you can find it in your heart to be an organ donor, you can help so many people with a second chance at life,” she says.
"...OFTEN I THINK OF MY [HEART] DONOR AND MY DONOR'S FAMILY." 10
Heart Health 2021 / TodaysWomanNow.com
Go Red for Women Photos by Melissa Donald
The Circle of Red, founded locally in 2008, is a group of passionate women leaders recognized for increasing awareness and improving women’s heart health. For more information or to become a member, please contact Karrie Harper at 502.371.6014.
Circle of Red Members: Above, left to right: Judie Parks, Kim Tharp-Barrie, Judith Petty, Ann Marie Holas-Dryps, Kimberlee Huffman, Terrian Barnes Below, left to right: Ruth Devore, Renee Cecil, Edith Mae Wright, Leah Eggers, Jill Bell Not pictured: Pamela Alvey, Carol Lambert, Gretchen Leiterman, Nancy Olzack
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Heart Health 2020 / TodaysWomanNow.com