Cardiology Patient Stories

When Tanya Ginther's heart suddenly failed, Mayo MedAir transported her to Mayo Clinic, where the young mother made a miraculous recovery.

By the time JoAnn Forster realized she'd had a heart attack, the damage was done. Then medical technology helped her bridge the gap to a new heart.

A diagnosis of congestive heart failure pulled Mia Welch off stage. After a heart transplant at Mayo Clinic, she's looking forward to dancing again.

When a heart condition threatened to slow down Alvin Haworth, he found his answer at Mayo Clinic.

With a business to run and an active lifestyle to maintain, Denny Waite turned to Mayo Clinic to find an experienced surgical team to perform his heart surgery and hasten his recovery.

Written by Jeff Schneider, Intern with Public Affairs in Florida Working as an intern in the Public Affairs department at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.,  I expected to learn about health care. Little did I realize I’d be learning so much about my own health and how to improve it. In the past two weeks, I not only passed out flyers, worked events and assisted the staff – all things I expected – but I also helped with press releases and media advisories on topics ranging from hurricane preparedness to cancer and heart health.

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 ...

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 home improvement store in Rochester, Minn. In retrospect, he recalls that during the previous winter, he couldn’t push a shovel full of snow more than five feet before getting chest discomfort and shortness of breath. He shrugged off the chest pain. “At my age, I didn’t think it’d be anything serious,” he says. “I thought it was heartburn.”

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 in Cozumel for five days, diving twice a day. On the morning of the last day, they made a deep dive. An expert diver, Martin always followed U.S. Navy dive tables and safety protocols. But shortly after he surfaced, Martin began to lose feeling in his hands and feet. The numbness crept up his legs and arms toward his body. He recognized the loss of feeling as a symptom of decompression sickness, or the bends, a condition that occurs when divers surface too fast and gas bubbles form in their bloodstream.

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 Jennifer immediately took his blood pressure. It measured 230/100 — dangerously high. “I didn’t know what was happening. One minute he was fine, the next he was out,” says Jennifer.

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 upper chambers of the heart — receive irregular electrical impulses that cause erratic heartbeats. Johns’ heart beat rapidly. She was light-headed and short of breath. The episodes occurred every three or four weeks, lasting 12 to 15 hours. Despite treatment with medication, the episodes increased to almost daily.

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.  ...