Rachel Willenberg
Rachel Willenberg rides a rollercoaster of symptoms that finally leads to treatment, and the family she's always wanted.
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Rachel Willenberg rides a rollercoaster of symptoms that finally leads to treatment, and the family she's always wanted.
Every day, with every step: Transplant patient Dan Olson honors his heart donor with his life.
When a heart condition threatened to slow down Alvin Haworth, he found his answer at Mayo Clinic.
I wish I knew more ways to say, "Thank you". I was given not just a second chance at life, but also a life with possibilities never imagined. Being born with congenital heart defects, my first open-heart surgery was performed ...
Last spring, Ravuth Thorng, then just 24, noticed it was increasingly difficult to do ordinary tasks, such as walking to his car. "I felt out of breath walking from my parking spot to work," says Thorng, who worked at a ...
Veteran scuba diver Scott Martin, 46, and his girlfriend left Florida in July 2011 to celebrate his birthday in Cozumel, Mexico. His experience there changed the way he thinks about his heart and his favorite pastime. The couple had been ...
Coughing. That is the sound that awoke Jennifer McDougal on the morning on Dec. 28, 2010. Her husband, Rodney, was in the bathroom preparing for work, and coughing. Suddenly, he collapsed. Rodney, then 42, had a history of hypertension, so ...
Rosalee Johns says she has her life back thanks to a freezing therapy called cryoablation that restored her heartbeat to normal. In 2008, Johns, then age 67, was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a condition in which the atria — the ...
Ron Boyle has had atrial fibrillation for twelve years. He recalls, "When I was in a-fib most of the time, getting upstairs was a problem. Just doing daily routine was a problem. Get up in the morning and being totally ...
"Couldn't breathe, gasping for air," is how Bobbie Sofia describes the first sign that something was wrong. In 2007, Bobbie Sofia and her husband, Sam, traveled to San Antonio, Texas from their home of almost forty years in Lake Havasu ...
Kari Ulrich, a patient with Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD), shares her story of struggles before and after being diagnosed with FMD in 2007. Kari writes: "Looking back to my early twenties, I suspected that the symptoms I was experiencing were not ...
New imaging technology helps determine cause, treatment for heart symptoms Many surfers fear sharks. But not Mike Politowicz, 45, a seasoned surfer with 30 years of experience. "Surfing is a form of relaxation," he says. Relaxation, that is, mixed with ...
On June 14, 2011, after a 107-day wait in the hospital at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., Kirk Watson, 44, received the news he'd been waiting for — a heart, liver and kidney were available for him. He would be ...
I went to Mayo Clinic for heart valve replacement surgery on October 13th, was released on the 18th, and can only say excellent things about the: Surgeon Dr. Hartzell Schaff and his staff. The surgery and recovery went smoothly, I ...
Austin Adamson, 19, was a day away from having heart surgery that would require a median sternotomy – "cracking open" the sternum (breastbone) to reach the heart – when he learned he was a candidate for a less-invasive procedure at ...
By Lindsay Engelstad I was not a patient at the Mayo Clinic Hospital, but my mother was. Prior to her going into the hospital, I always hear people say "Go to the Mayo Clinic it is the best place to be ...
The young are bullet-proof. Or they seem to think they are. That's probably why we don't see middle-aged X-games athletes. Rare, too, is the 65 year old motocross racer or the social security recipient who spends his free time sky ...
What began as an isolated episode of shortness of breath and developed into symptoms of increasing fatigue in 2008, turned into an unexpected and serious medical condition for David Hawley, a retired hotel executive in Phoenix, Arizona. David Hawley received ...
For weeks, Amy Brase had brushed off nagging chest pain. "It just didn't seem like an emergency," says Brase, a 36-year-old writer and mother of three from Oronoco, Minn. But after reading an article on heart attack symptoms in women, ...
Howard Snitzer will be the first to tell you he's a lucky man. "I just wish I'd won the lottery instead," he says, jokingly. But Snitzer knows his good fortune netted him something much more valuable: his life. Snitzer, a ...
Jack Stiehl, 71, Sun City West, Ariz., was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2004. He had difficulty breathing and was easily winded. In 2007, with ever worsening symptoms, Stiehl recalls his local physician saying he was out of options; ...
Photo: Daniela, pictured top left, enjoys time with her brothers and sister at our home in Ecuador after her procedure at Mayo Clinic. Written by her parents, Juan and Victoria (Ecuador): My wife Victoria has always believed in miracles. I ...
Written by heart attack survivor Susan Cardelli: Just last week was the 10th Anniversary of my heart attack—January 25, 2001—or as the medical community would call it "A Cardiac Event". Whenever I hear it referred to as a "cardiac event", ...
Naomi Atrubin of Rochester, Minnesota, is a two-time heart attack survivor. Not only is she a survivor, but she is also an active volunteer in the community, giving back to others through educating people she meets about heart disease. One ...
People often ask 22-year-veteran Kay Thiemann why she has stayed at Mayo Clinic for so many years. Her answer is simple: "Because we embrace our mission to put the needs of the patient first. And because we are committed to ...
This story was submitted by Ron Reffitt Jr. In this photo, I'm holding my first grandson, Blake, born this summer to my daughter, Jennifer, behind me, and her husband, Brandon. My sons, Cody and Ron, are on the other side ...
Just days after being told he had a tumor inside his heart, Ron Reffitt Jr., of Elk Rapids, Mich., was on a medical airplane headed to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Gazing down at Lake Michigan on that beautiful sunny ...
'Date Night' Takes on New Meaning for Heart Patient at Mayo Clinic in Arizona It would be hard to ignore the elephant in the room. This "elephant" happens to be the 400-pound artificial heart machine that is keeping alive a ...
Here's a note we received this week from Kathryn Kuhlmann, the mother of a Mayo Clinic pediatric patient: My daughter, Abby, who is 11, had heart surgery at Mayo on May 29, and she recorded a short video tour ...
As an 8-year-old girl from Michigan was headed into surgery for a heart transplant, she asked Mike Ackerman — a pediatric cardiology fellow at Mayo who was part of her care team — if she was going to live. Dr. ...
I was told these words following a night in the ER where I received superior care/ treatment to determine if I was having and/or had a heart attackand yes I did. After 3 days in St.Marys, where I received the ...
Generally when the heart of Adrian Fernandez is beating at a frenetic pace, he's behind the wheel of a race car, and a highly trained and loyal pit crew is waiting around the next turn of the track to spring ...
Shortly after he was born in early 2008, Trevor King was diagnosed with Long QT Syndrome, a condition that could cause sudden cardiac death. He may be the youngest patient ever to get a pacemaker-defibrillator, a device that sends an ...
Mayo Clinic heart patients and family members returned to Mayo in Oct. 2008 to share stories of their care through a program called "Stories of the Heart: Through the Eyes of Our Patients." Patients talked about their care at Mayo ...
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