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Survivor helps mend broken hearts
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After a life-changing experience of her own, Lee Meadows of Austintown has spent the past 13 years educating and helping people in the Youngstown area who have heart trouble. She is an active member of Chapter 7 of Mended Hearts, a national organization for heart-disease survivors. PHOTO BY: NICK MAYS | SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
She’s there to support others in a heartbeat.
By JoAnn Jones
Lee Meadows of Austintown had a life-changing experience in June 1999.
“I had a little shock in my shoulder,” she said, “in a very unusual spot. I started sweating profusely. I knew something was just not right.”
She called her son, Ralph Spotleson of Austintown, who called her doctor. The doctor said to get her to St. Elizabeth Health Center immediately.
“Had I known then what I know today,” she said, “I would have known it was a heart attack.”
Since that time, Meadows has been active in Chapter 7 of Mended Hearts, a national organization for heart-disease survivors, in the Youngstown area. Serving in various offices and on several committees, Meadows has spent 13 years educating and helping people who have heart trouble.
At the time of her heart attack, Meadows had no idea of the seriousness of her problems, she said. The St. Elizabeth staff sent her to the Cleveland Clinic to consult with a cardiologist and a surgeon.
“In my infinite wisdom, I said to the cardiologist, ‘I don’t have time for surgery right now.’”
“He told me, ‘Let me explain. I could give you two weeks, two months, or two years. But your heart valves are so bad, you could die now.”
She decided she did have time to have the surgery.
Her surgeon, Delos Cosgrove, M.D., a world- renowned cardiothoracic surgeon and the current CEO of Cleveland Clinic, told her after surgery that he had replaced her heart valves with bovine and porcine valves.
“I said to him: ‘Are you kidding? Does that mean I’m going to oink and moo?’”
“Animal valves are very compatible with the human body,” Meadows added. “Because I got in there [Cleveland Clinic] so fast, I had no actual damage to my heart.”
After her surgery, Meadows was visited by a man who was an Accredited Visitor for Mended Hearts.
“He gave me 100 percent emotional support,” she said. “I’d been thinking about what I was going to do when I retired. His being there and what he did for me told me what I was going to do.”
Meadows spent the summer months recuperating at the home of her daughter, Dana Giambroni, in New Hartford, N.Y., and returned to Austintown that September. Three months later, in December, she retired from her job at Simco Management Corp. of Girard.
“She took such good care of me,” Meadows said of her daughter. “She watched my diet and made me take one more step each day.
She credits all three of her children — Spotleson, Giambroni and second daughter Dawnelle Bradford of Columbus — with her speedy recovery.
“They were all instrumental in making sure I was behaving,” she said with a laugh. “I couldn’t have received better care than my children gave me.”
“As soon as I came back from my daughter’s,” she said, “I got on the Internet and found the local chapter of Mended Hearts. I went to my first meeting in September, and it was very interesting. Then I took training to become an Accredited Mended Hearts Visitor.”
“Accredited Visitors — we have a chairman in charge of them — visit the patient,” she added, “but we also have Accredited Family Visitors, people who go into the waiting room and sit with the family during surgery. This is usually someone who has been a caregiver and can explain what the family’s role will be.”
Since Meadows began her service to Mended Hearts, she has served as a hospital visitor, committee chairwoman and chapter officer over the past 13 years. And Chapter 7, which was established 20 years ago as one of 276 in the United States and Canada at the time, has enabled her to help educate and encourage others through her involvement.
The entire chapter’s involvement—not just her own, Meadows stressed — garnered a national award in 2005.
“I was president from 2004 to 2006,” Meadows explained, “and each year Mended Hearts selects a chapter that has accomplished the most and presents it with the President’s Cup. We were at an educational meeting in North Carolina. When they called my name for the award, I just sat there. I was so shocked but so proud.”
“I won that, but I didn’t do that by myself,” she added. “We had accomplished a lot of things to bring us to that point.”
Not only did Meadows serve locally, but she also traveled to Washington with members of the American Heart and Stroke Association to meet with congressmen about all the bills dealing with heart research and education.
“I went with a cardiologist, a nurse and a representative from the Heart Association,” Meadows said. “I would tell my story, and then a medical person would speak, and then someone from the Heart Association. I learned so much, and it was a wonderful experience.”
With everything the chapter does, Meadows said visiting patients has been very rewarding for her because they can see she is healthy after knowing she was where they are.
“I do this because I’m giving something back,” she said. “I give to heart patients what he [her first Mended Hearts visitor] gave to me.”
However, she said she personally performs another service.
“The best service I provide is speaking to local organizations about heart disease,” she said. “I introduce myself as a survivor. By hearing what happened to me, people respond to that — when you hear from someone who’s been there.
“I always start out with: ‘This is the day that you are going to fall madly and passionately in love with your heart,’” she said. “I always end it with: ‘The heart tells you when you’re in love and tells you when you’re afraid, but it doesn’t always tell you when you have heart disease. It does tell you to pay attention to your body.’”
Chapter 7, which has 47 members, meets at 7 p.m. the fourth Wednesday every month at the Boardman campus of St. Elizabeth’s.
“We have a lot of medical speakers and health-related meetings,” Meadows said. “About 75 percent of our meetings are health-related, and two meetings are a little lighter. We also have a holiday party.”
“I think the service that Mended Hearts provides through emotional support and the education through the meetings is rewarding,” Meadows said. “Our visiting program is the most important thing Mended Hearts does.”