A healthy heart

GREENWOOD, Miss. (AP) - Rhonda Pierce says she came down with a mysterious illness in July 2019 that she believes may have saved her life.

“No one knew what it was; I wound up in the hospital for 10 days, and I spent five or six days in the ICU with some tremendously mysterious illness,” the Teoc resident said.

Pierce said she had “no white count, no platelets, and while they were doing all the tests to discover what was going on, I went into a-fib,” or atrial fibrillation, which is an irregular heartbeat that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.

She said during her time in the hospital she had normal EKGs and chest x-rays.

“But after the a-fib, they (tested) my heart enzymes, and they said my heart enzymes were nearly 100 times what they should be, which indicated I had a blockage, heart attack and possibly some damage,” Pierce said.

After she left the hospital to recover, she found out she also had a heart attack during her stay.

While there are several risk factors for heart disease, Pierce only had one - heredity.

She said it took a month after her hospital stay before she was healthy enough for a cardiac catheterization. During the procedure, a blockage was found in her left anterior descending (LAD) artery, which, when completely blocked, causes the “widow maker” heart attack.

“And I don’t have damage even though they said it indicated I would probably have some damage. I don’t have any,” Pierce said. “That’s the good Lord looking after me. I know that He made me sick so that I would be in that hospital when it happened, so they could fix me.”

After receiving a stent to fix the blockage, Pierce’s physician referred her to Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s outpatient cardiac rehab at the Wellness Center.

She started a program in September 2019.

After the stent, Pierce felt like she was ready to go back to her active lifestyle.

“My thoughts then were, ‘Why am I here? I feel good now, and I’m busy, and I think I can get this done,” she said.

Lee Roach, a registered nurse and cardiac rehab nurse, explained to Pierce that she needed to go slow during her recovery.

Heart health education is one of the primary functions of cardiac rehab.

“We educate them about their risk factors and about their heart condition,” said Roach. “A lot of patients only know that they have heart trouble, so the education is a big component of it. … We want them to understand what’s really wrong with their heart, if they have any physical limitations and what they can do to make their heart better.”

After an initial assessment, patients are risk stratified according to the American College of Sports Medicine’s guidelines from low to moderate to high risk.

Although Pierce felt well, she was still considered “high risk.” Because of this, she had to go slow to gain her strength.

Cardiac rehab also offers education about diet and exercise.

“We will go over the do’s and don’ts and things that you can do to make your heart better,” said Roach.

Taking medication is important, but there are also lifestyle changes a patient can make to assist in recovery.

“It’s really a lifestyle modification program,” Roach said of cardiac rehab. “It’s talking to you and counseling you and teaching you on eating healthy and exercising.”

Roach said consistent exercise is very important, and not just for those recovering from a cardiac event. Everyone can benefit from exercise.

“Your heart can actually form its own bypass from exercising, so you can develop that collateral circulation,” she said. “If you have coronary heart disease, even a little bit, which we all get as part of the aging process, if you are regularly exercising, your body will develop all of these blood vessels - that’s collateral circulation. That can actually help sustain life and prevent you from having a heart attack.”

Roach’s goal for her patients is to “get them back to maximum functional capacity as far as their physical ability.”

There’s even been instances where a patient comes in barely able to walk or using a walker, and by the end of treatment, that patient is walking for 20 minutes on the treadmill at every session.

“I found out it is better than just for your heart,” Pierce said about exercise. “I had some major arthritis problems, and it’s worked really well for that, too.”

Pierce has now “graduated” from her cardiac rehab but continues her heart healthy lifestyle as a member of the Wellness Center, where she also visits with the patients and staff members who she now considers her “family.”

“I like it here; I come regularly,” she said. “I have to keep up with things here, and you have to keep up with your family.”

To Roach, when her graduated patients are feeling well and continuing with the program they started during rehab that means her job is complete.

“I’m always excited when they say, ‘You know, since I’ve been coming here, I can tell the difference. I feel better when I leave here.’ I feel like my job is done,” she said. “When they tell you, ‘I feel so much better when I exercise,’ it’s part of them. Lifestyle change has occurred, and it occurred here.”

Wellness Center Director John Cook said Heart Health Month, which is February, is a good way to get more information out to the community.

“We need to have more education and more understanding of what the heart actually does and why it’s so important to take care of it,” he said. Cook said the patients who attend cardiac rehab are usually highly motivated to begin a healthy lifestyle “because they’ve already had the episode or have some kind of disease process developing.”

“They are highly motivated to change those behaviors and habits,” he said.

But it’s never too early to start taking steps to have and maintain a healthy heart.

“We want people to understand that when they hear all of these things about healthy lifestyles, healthy eating and healthy habits, there’s a purpose behind it - so you don’t become those statistics, and so you don’t become one of the people we have to treat.”