Exercise enthusiast inspires heart patients

Pam Phillips gets up every day and heads outside for a four- or five-mile run.

Then, she'll finish off a three- to four-hour workout session with more cardiovascular work swimming or on a stepmill, some weight training, or maybe a boot camp or cardiokick class in the gym at North Pointe Wellness. Twice a month, she takes her turn as a volunteer in SwedishAmerican Hospital's Mended Hearts program, visiting patients recovering from open-heart surgery.

Both sets of activities are essential elements of life for Phillips, 49, who five years ago on Feb. 5 was on an operating table at Rockford Memorial Hospital for repair of an aortic aneurysm.

"I'm running every day still and I probably feel the best ever," said Phillips, who ran the first Rockford Literacy Council half-marathon in 2 hours, 1 minute three months after her surgery.

She was training for the half-marathon in January 2003 when she felt pain in her left arm and heaviness in her chest. Her brother had died of a heart attack at age 49 two years earlier, so she resolved to visit her doctor the next week.

But during the next morning's run she experienced a sharp pain in her stomach and doctors determined the problem was a faulty valve in her aorta. A few days later, Dr. David Cheng replaced the faulty aortic valve and cut out the part of the aorta with the aneurysm, and replaced that section with a plastic tube.

"If I wasn't in shape, I don't know if I would have noticed the few signs I did have," Phillips said.

"It was just something telling me that something wasn't right. Usually, there's no warning with an aneurysm and they said that, probably in a week, I would have been gone because of the size of the aneurysm."

Her experience prompted Phillips to volunteer that summer to work on a local committee for the American Heart Association and she learned about the Mended Hearts program.

Since 2004, she has been visiting at the bedsides of new heart surgery patients two Fridays a month.

"Every day, there is a visitor from Mended Hearts who goes to visit," Phillips said. She said a typical day of volunteering will include visits to eight to 10 patients, and delivering information packets to the patients and their families.

"I remember that feeling when one of the volunteers walked into my room," Phillips said. "Now, when I tell them I went through this two years ago or three years ago - now it's five - they just look at me and I tell them I'm doing great.

"If they're having a rough day, I try to tell that tomorrow is going to be better, and when you share with them that you've been through it, I think they appreciate it."

Phillips said she tries to answer any questions the patients have but keeps the visits upbeat.

"The fortunate thing for me was that I wasn't told to quit smoking or to lose 60 pounds or to start exercising," she said. "A lot of these patients have to go through those changes and it's very hard on them."

She also invites each patient to join Mended Hearts, which holds its meetings the third Monday of every month at SwedishAmerican Hospital. "It's very interesting, and it's a good support group," she said.

Phillips also is a volunteer for the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign, which encourages women to inform themselves about their risks of heart disease and stroke.

The campaign is promoting a Go Red Heart Checkup at www.goredforwomen.org through which women, and the men in their lives, can calculate their risk of having a heart attack or cardiovascular disease in the next 10 years and learn about changes they can make to reduce their risk.

Phillips also is helping with the local association's first Go Red for Women Dinner scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 25, at Giovanni's Restaurant and Convention Center.

The dinner is a fundraiser for the association and will feature Eliz Greene, the author of The Busy Woman's Guide to Heart Health. Greene became the original face of the Go Red campaign after she suffered massive heart attack while she was seven months pregnant with twins.

She survived a 10-minute cardiac arrest, the Caesarean delivery of her daughters and open-heart surgery all on the same day.

"It's a fundraiser but it's also to raise awareness that we need to be conscious of our heart health not just during heart month, but all the time," Phillips said.

Mike DeDoncker can be reached at (815) 987-1382 or mdedoncker@rrstar.com .