Steve Parsons

"I just can't say enough good about the whole experience. The care was generous and I never felt displaced, not for one moment."

For Steve Parsons, life is a matter of facts. As a lawyer, he collects the facts and argues them on behalf of his clients. In his personal life, he's straightforward about the facts regarding the depression he's dealt with for years. And, as a patient he listens to the facts and trusts his physician's recommendations — even when that means making a fast decision to implant a pacemaker.

Parsons, 54, has been a patient at Mayo Clinic's Executive Health Program in Arizona for more than a decade. He's considered a relatively high-risk patient not only because of his family history and diabetes, but also because of his seven-foot, 300-plus pound frame.

"Because of my size, I don't do the stress test on a treadmill. They don't make them big enough," he jokes. "Seriously, a stress test for me equates to an injection that simulates stress on my heart. I've done the test before, but this time I got sick to my stomach almost immediately, before the point at which my heart was even stressed."

What Parsons found out was that the upper and lower chambers of his heart weren't communicating — essentially he had no heartbeat. Within minutes, Gregory Altemose, M.D., a Mayo Clinic cardiologist who specializes in electrophysiology, entered the testing room.

"What we were seeing with Steve was an electrical blockage," says Dr. Altemose. "We were lucky we were testing him at the time because it happened completely out of the blue, unrelated to the stress test. When we questioned him later, we were able to determine that during previous unexplained periods of light-headedness and nausea, the same thing may have been happening."

Within 48 hours, Parsons spent the night in the hospital and left the next day with a 1 1/2 inch incision in his chest and a new pacemaker. Parsons returned to Las Vegas to his family and to his high-stress career as one of the country's top insurance bad faith lawyers. Since the 1980s, he has repeatedly been cited by his peers as one of the country's top lawyers with his selection into the book Best Lawyers in America.

Parsons initially visited the Executive Health Program and Michael A. Covalciuc, M.D., after a Mayo Clinic-trained doctor and family friend urged him to seek a full medical workup to deal with his health history, high-stress job and tendency toward depression.

"What I've found with Dr. Covalciuc is a true peer relationship," he says. "I don't go in and get a lecture. I get to have an honest discussion about trends and perspectives regarding my health. I'm not that great at reporting on my own health history, so having everything digitized and integrated is a real bonus."

Parsons makes it a policy to be open and frank about his health and always makes time during speaking engagements to discuss the facts about depression — namely that people recognize the signs and seek treatment. This open attitude carried over as he discussed his pacemaker and heart condition with his colleagues, friends and family.

"My wife and I are trying hard to break through our tendencies for denial and to make sure our kids know it's okay to talk about feelings and personal health conditions," he says. "For myself, I've had to deal with my own emotions as this was really the first time something major happened to me health-wise. I'm convinced, though, that Mayo Clinic Executive Health is a premium program and I'm just so grateful and impressed about the humane way in which they deliver health care."