Heart Disease Connects Us All

From the Winter 2012 StayHealthy publication

Heart Attacks Inspire Healthier Lifestyle

After three heart attacks and two by-pass surgeries, David Berger said “enough” and resolved to get heart-healthy.

He’s a regular participant in local road races, active in the Wanatah Chamber of Commerce, a volunteer for the LaCrosse School Corporation, and an enthusiastic fan for his grandchildren’s basketball and softball games. It’s also hard to believe that 20 years ago Berger had his first heart attack.

I was sitting at work, smoking a cigarette and having a cup of co…ffee when it started,” he recalled. “Just two weeks before the heart attack I was white water rafting on the Chattooga River. If it had happened out there, I wouldn’t have lived through it,” he said. Luckily that wasn’t the case and Berger ended up at Porter in the care of cardiologist Keith Atassi, MD. He had an angioplasty and returned to work within weeks. Yet he didn’t slow down or modify unhealthy habits. Within months he was having double bypass surgery.

After that, I did pretty good. I lost weight and started exercising. But before long the shift work and bad habits caught up with me again. I wasn’t eating right, and I was smoking again,” he said. More heart problems followed, requiring a series of stents, and then, in 2009, another bypass surgery. “By the time I was 59, I had three heart attacks and two bypass surgeries. I had gotten to where I couldn’t even walk down the street because I was breathing so hard,” said Berger.

But that last heart attack was the turning point in not taking care of myself,” he resolved. He began attending the aerobics class his daughter, Dara, teaches. He joined Weight Watchers, learned to eat healthy, and lost 50 pounds. “I started out real slow. I started walking every day and watching what I ate. And I started feeling better,” he said. Before long his doctor was able to reduce his medications by half. Berger’s own work was paying off.

Today, Berger has lost weight and gained a new lifestyle. “I realized that Dr. Keith [Atassi] can only do the inside work. The rest is up to me. At first I was huffing and puffing. But I’m trying to take care of myself these days. I just had an echocardiogram and learned that I have more blood flow now than at my last visit. My cholesterol and weight are way down. I just keep moving,” he said. ‘I’m grateful for Dr. Keith Atassi and the people at Porter for doing their jobs so well. I’m also grateful for my health and that I have the time to take care of myself from this point on.”

Restoring Heart Rhythm through Ablation

Imagine your heart racing out-of-control for hours. That was Sue AmRhein’s life until ablation surgery.

They would last for a minute or two and then go away,” she said. “I was used to them.” But when she reached her early 50s, the symptoms intensified. “My heart would beat 180 to 200 beats per minute. And it would go on for hours. I would get short of breath and lightheaded. Just sitting and breathing was exhausting.” She was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a condition in which the upper chambers of the heart (the atria) begin to quiver instead of beating rhythmically. This can cause blood to remain in the atria, where it may form clots. Also, she developed an atrial flutter in her other chamber.

As a professor of anatomy, it was ironic that AmRhein’s own anatomy was preventing her from carrying on a normal life. Under the care of cardiac electrophysiologist Mark Dixon, DO, she had tried virtually every medication in an attempt to manage both of her conditions. Yet nothing helped. Exhausted and afraid that her arrhythmia could bring on lightheadedness or a black out at any time, she was reluctant to drive or do anything beyond the essentials. “I basically had no life. I was at a point where I was just existing.”

Under Dixon’s guidance, AmRhein chose to undergo ablation surgery, a procedure in which a catheter – a long, flexible tube – is inserted through a vein in the groin and threaded to the heart where it can correct structural problems that cause arrhythmia. Because her condition involved both the left and right atria of her heart, she needed two separate ablation procedures, both performed by Dixon at Porter, but a month apart.

I saw a dramatic improvement,” she said. “I remember the first night being scary just because I could no longer feel my heart. For three and a half years I had felt my heart beating all the time and now it was quiet. I could sleep through the night,” she said. “I was up walking around the first day after the procedure,” she said.

Today, two years after the ablation, AmRhein is free of symptoms and medications. “I had great results. I remember shortly after the surgery I was grocery shopping. Where before I had been dependent on the shopping cart to get around the store, I realized that I was practically racing around the store. My energy and confidence are back.”

Back in Action After P.A.D.

Thin and active, Al Murawski couldn’t believe he had peripheral artery disease.

In charge of football statistics on the sidelines of the Chesterton High School football team, Murawski was the kind of guy who would play football in the yard and could still do flips o… the diving board. Suddenly at 52 he couldn’t walk two blocks because of pain in his legs. “And my feet were freezing, even in mild weather.”

Never one to visit the doctor, Murawski tolerated the pain. “It took a lot to get me into a doc. I had to be bleeding to death or something,” he joked. “But I couldn’t walk any more. I wasn’t winded, but I had excruciating, debilitating pain. I couldn’t play golf. We went to a tailgate at Purdue, and I couldn’t get to the stadium.” Murawski decided it was time to see a doctor. A painless test using ultrasound revealed he had peripheral artery disease, PAD, which was blocking the circulation to his legs.

Within weeks, Murawski was scheduled for angioplasty surgery with Sandeep Sehgal, MD, an interventional cardiologist at Porter. “After the surgery, I knew immediately that it was better. Within hours I was out of bed and in a week I was bowling,” he said. He recently had a second successful procedure to restore circulation to the other leg.


Visit the Porter Health System website
Valparaiso Campus
814 LaPorte Avenue
Valparaiso, IN 46383
Phone: 219-263-4600

I haven’t felt this good in probably 15 years,” he said. “And this has prompted me to get healthy. I didn’t know that my cholesterol was o… the charts, my triglycerides were out of whack, and my blood pressure was high. I’m a thin guy and thought I was healthy,” he said. “If I had started going to the doctor when I was 40 instead of waiting until now, I would have been prescribed cholesterol medications sooner and I wouldn’t have abused myself. But now I know. I eat better. I have a new outlook. I want to hike the Grand Canyon. And I can.”