Violet's Cardiology Story
Violet's Story - Baptist Health Heart Care
When my son passed away three years ago, it was time for a new start, and that's kind of what this property means to us.
The gardening is all raised beds because we live literally on a mountain, you know, and then the heart attack happened and a lot got put on hold when that happened.
You know how you see the bubbles rise in a Coke or Sprite or something?
That is kind of what I felt.
And I was like, that's not normal.
That shouldn't be happening this way. And my husband looks at me and he asked, he's like, are you okay? And I said, I don't think I'm okay.
When they took her to the cath lab when she got here, they found that she had a one hundred percent blockage in the large artery that goes around to the left side of the heart. So we look at three major ones down the front, to the right, and to the left, and the entire left side of her heart was really not getting any blood flow at all.
When he put the stent in and then open it up, that was the first deep breath I had taken in two weeks because I was like barely breathing. I was just I had no idea. I just thought I was so tired.
When I met Violet, she was overwhelmed and she was scared, but she was determined. And in that moment, she said, what do I need to do? And so when a patient has set their mind to, I want to own my health, I want to improve my health, I want to be active in this role, it really makes my job a lot easier.
This vest lets us send people home safely if they are at risk for going into those life threatening dysrhythmias. So they wear this all the time except for when they're in the shower.
And if they were to go into that rhythm, it would sense it and it would deliver a shock.
You know, it's temporary to get you to be safe and stay alive until you can get to help or until help can get to you. It'll give you a lot of confidence.
We talked about diet. We talked about exercise. We talked about cardiac rehabilitation, which she took part in.
I will tell every soul on this planet, you need to go to cardiac rehab. The people in the cardiac rehab are awesome.
It allows us to get people moving in a safe way.
People can just go out and walk in their street, but they don't have a heart monitor on, and they don't have a registered nurse watching them saying, okay. I need you to take a little bit easier now. Let's let your heart recover, or you've got some room here. Let's push. Let's go even faster.
When I got to cardiac rehab, I was not in good shape. They do an in test and an out test.
When I left, I did it half the time and I had lost a lot of weight because I stuck to our diet plan for me.
I stuck to the exercise.
I took my meds. I took my blood pressure. I kept my diary. I did the thing and they took the rest away and a couple of medicines have disappeared.
But Kay has never let go of my hand the whole way, you know. And that to me is something you don't find a lot of, but I found it at the heart failure clinic. I have found it with Kaye. I have found it with heart rehab.
I found it at Baptist. They're not gonna make me do it on my own.
Violet's got a lot of eyes on her heart health these days.
Even machines need checkups.
You know, we take her car for an oil change every three months. So now that she has heart disease, she gets routine checkups, and we make sure that everything is exactly where we want it to keep her from developing new blockages.
Now I'm finally living again.
Healing comes in many forms, and sometimes that form is a very serious wake up call.
I have been so blessed with the Baptist care team. Baptist Health Corbin has been an amazing place to take my medical care from.
They care.
That's that's the best way I can put it is, Baptist Health Corbin, they care.
I actually felt like somebody cared, you know, so, yeah, they're kind of special to me.