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Prime Times Heartfelt advice Rogue Valley cardiac patients receive advice and comfort from Mended Hearts � a volunteer organization made up of people who�ve experienced heart surgery themselves By John Darling It could be one of life�s most terrifying and lonely moments � lying in the hospital waiting for heart surgery and worrying whether you�ll ever be active and normal again, or if you�ll even survive. Then, in pops a volunteer from Mended Hearts. He�s been under the knife, just like you�re about to be, and now he�s normal, working, watching his diet and exercise, and above all, enjoying life. "It sparked me right up," said Chuck Schumacher, Shady Cove, who had heart surgery four years ago and now is president of the region�s Mended Hearts chapter. "I was lying there thinking, hey, there�s something wrong with my heart. I was scared and looking at all these unknowns. The volunteers came in and told me I was looking good and they just put me at ease and told me everything was going to be all right." Mended Hearts, Inc. was founded in 1955 and began a Rogue Valley chapter in 1982. The organization, now operating in 260 locales, is affiliated with the American Heart Association. Each chapter works closely with cardiac staff, such as Loretta Petersen, cardiac nurse at Rogue Valley Medical Center. "The Mended Hearts people are trained to be warm, supportive, informed and candid," she said. "They�ve all been through it. They�re truthful about how scared they were. They sit there and answer any questions the patient might have. And they show patients there�s life after cardiac surgery." Always at the top of the list of heart patients� worries, of course, is death, Petersen said. "They (patients) are pretty nervous people. It�s about fear of death. They know they have a 1 to 2 percent chance of not surviving this, but we (staff and Mended Hearts volunteers) turn that around and reassure patients they have a 98 to 99 percent chance of surviving and having a great life afterwards." Retired Medford High School teacher Vern Wolthoff, 83, faced his triple bypass with "a certain amount of anxiety " � enough so that he replaced the old car (it had 85,000 miles) with a new one for his wife�s sake, just in case he didn�t make it. "You�re concerned. You�re lying there seeing it: They�re going to open you up like a watermelon and put you on a heart-lung machine with artificial oxygen." On his first Mended Hearts mission, Wolthoff counseled a retired deputy sheriff from Los Angeles. "He was frankly frightened. He said, what if they�re not able to restart my heart? I told him they would use shock. He was just used to being in control and believe me, with heart surgery, you�re not in control," Wolthoff said. Attitude makes an enormous difference, said Wolthoff, who�s made 500 visits as a Mended Hearts volunteer. "I�ve had a lot of people tell me that, until I walked into their room, they�d pretty much made up their minds that they weren�t going to survive. But after we talked, they said they could see life after heart surgery." Mended Heart volunteers give patients their card and remain on call for support or to answer questions � both before and after surgery. They tell patients, and sometimes their families, to expect big changes in diet (low fat, low-cholesterol) and to plan on lots of exercise (i.e.: get several pairs of walking shoes). They�ll be off work six to eight weeks. And there might be some emotional changes. "Depression is pretty common for a while," said Schumacher, "because you�re not as active as before. You want to sleep a lot. I tell them it�s normal, you�re not going to paint the garage right now, but in a few months, you�ll be out there bowling, golfing and hunting." Mended Hearts volunteers are "a big part of the success" of the heart program at Rogue Valley Medical Center, said Petersen. "I�ve seen them go in there and completely turn people around, so that by the time they leave, they�ve got the patient saying, �OK, I can do this.� They�re angels." Mended Heart volunteers meet at 7 p.m. every third Tuesday at the RVMC Smullin Center. Meetings are free and open to the public. For more information on the organization, visit the Web site: www.mendedhearts.org . Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.