Volunteers lend a hand -- and a big heart

Mended Hearts group helps surgery patients

Gerard Annabel collapsed due to a massive heart attack in the parking lot of the former Veteran's Medical Center on March 26, 1997 -- a date he calls his second birthday.

While in the hospital ready to undergo open-heart surgery, Annabel was approached by the volunteers of Mended Hearts. When he recovered from quadruple bypass surgery, he joined Mended Hearts. The nonprofit organization was born in 1951 as a result of three women conversing in a doctor's office. Today, there are 250 chapters with 25,000 volunteers nationwide and in Canada. The only qualification for volunteers is heart surgery.

Volunteers visit heart patients before and after their surgeries to answer nonmedical questions and give personal advice. They also work with the American Heart Association to educate children and adults on heart health.

"Our volunteers have had heart surgery themselves, so they're ideal for these patients," said Suzanne Poisson, director of volunteer services at University Medical Center. "They have a calming influence on the families and the patients because they've been through it themselves."

Heart surgery requires the cutting of the sternum and spreading of the ribs. When patients are recovering, coughing and sneezing is encouraged, but every movement can be painful. Mended Hearts gives the patients firm, heart-shaped pillows to hold to their chests to help ease the pain.

The pillow comes with a marker, so doctors, nurses, family members and volunteers can autograph it with their well wishes. Annabel said he usually writes something like "your odometer has been turned back to zero," he said.

"You're so anxious because of the operation. You think, `Is this it? Is this final?' " said Annabel, who turned 80 this week. "I see a smile on their face when I'm there."

Mended Hearts volunteers visit University Medical Center, Desert Springs and St. Rose de Lima hospitals. Many patients are locals, but some are tourists who have heart attacks while on vacation. Annabel made friends with a South African poker player, who he visited last year.

Six weeks after his heart surgery, Annabel walked the Great Wall of China.

"There's nothing you can't do. I tell them every year I go to a different country," he said. "Last year, I was in the Amazon climbing on nets above the jungle and sleeping in tents."

Students at Wynn Elementary School recently chipped in to help Annabel and the volunteers do their jobs. They created a 6-by-8-foot heart made of hundreds of smaller paper quilled hearts.

Art students in Ashley Forgey's classes created the heart, but they didn't know what to do with it once Valentine's Day was over. The students decided to raffle off the piece for 25 cents a ticket, and donate the funds to Mended Hearts. Third-grader Merlin Balderas took home the heart. Mended Hearts was presented with $200.

Annabel said the money will pay to print brochures, pamphlets and other educational materials discussing heart health.

The former president of the organization, Annabel said the scariest part of visiting patients is finding they are younger than 50.

"When they see me with my white hair and my white beard, they see that I'm not a teenager anymore," he said. "They think `If he survived it, I can survive it, too.' "


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