Visiting

Mended Hearts Visiting

The foundation of Mended Hearts is its hospital visiting program. Trained visitors who have survived heart disease help other heart patients and their families by listening, sharing their experiences, answering questions and empathizing with their anxieties and concerns. They talk to other heart patients about what they may face, including lifestyle changes, depression, recovery, and treatment. Heart patients and families gain hope by meeting people who are living proof that there can be a full and healthy life after heart disease.

For the year ending March 31, 2005, our chapter made 1180 visits to heart patients in the medical centers of the Meridian Health system. Nationwide, Mended Hearts volunteers annually make 227,000 hospital visits to patients and 30,000 visits to family members and caregivers.

Why We Visit

Heart patients in the hospital sometimes feel as though they're surrounded by two kinds of people: those who are worried and need to be reassured, and those who want to be reassuring but can't be believed.

That's where you can help as a visitor. Patients can believe you. You can help them understand what it means to be a heart patient, because you are one.

You're not giving medical advice. You're showing them, by being there, what kind of future they might be looking forward to. If a picture is worth a thousand words, being there is worth a thousand pictures.

Visiting in Our Chapter

In our chapter, we partner with the medical centers of the Meridian Health family to help those affected by heart disease to have a positive patient-care experience.

1. Be a heart patient or a family member of a heart patient.
2. Become a Mended Hearts member.
3. Become an accredited volunteer at the hospital where you will visit, by attending a volunteer orientation session.
4. Complete the MHI accreditation training. You will attend a visitor training session, and you will be accompanied by another trained visitor until you are comfortable with visiting patients.

If you want to become a Mended Hearts visitor, start by contacting Neil Paulsen or another chapter officer.

Here's what Len Talalai had to say as Visiting Chairman of Chapter #179:

What do I get out of visiting? Probably the greatest joy in the world. Really. When I can sit down with a patient … I want to give you one example. You walk into a room and a woman is crying her eyes out. She’s in her forties, mother of three, and all she was worried about was the scar on her chest. You’re a little taken aback, as to what you’re going to say to a patient like this. But somehow, somewhere, some divine intervention gave me an idea when I was talking to her, and I said to her, “You know,” I says, “yeah, you have an ugly scar, but that will heal up pretty good.” I said, “Give me a mirror, look into the mirror and tell me what you see.” Well, she’s crying her eyes out and saying all she sees is an ugly scar. I said, “Aren’t you putting the emphasis in the wrong place? Turn your head, and look at your night table. What do you see? three beautiful girls. Where should your priorities be? Now you’ve been operated on, you’re made better, you’re going to have a good life, you’re going to be able to take care of those three girls.” And little by little, she put a little smile on her face, realizing she was worried about the wrong thing. Those are the nice experiences, and there are many, many others I’ve been through.

Here's what a patient who was visited said about it in the Winter 2005 issue of Heartbeat:

After I'd had an EKG and stress test, the doctor said I had a problem. It was on May 17, ----. The next day I underwent catheterization, and they found six blockages between 80 and 100 percent. The day after that, I had six bypasses. By the 21st, I was starting to get depressed, thinking "Here I am 50 years old and I just had six bypasses. What's left for me to do in life?" The nursing staff had already taken me for my first walk out of the room, and I hadn't even made it halfway down the hall.

Then in walked two men who I did not know. They were from Mended Hearts and had also had surgeries. They were older than me, and if they hadn't told me, I would never have guessed that they'd gone through any type of heart procedure. They were cheerful and easygoing, and they knew what I'd just gone through. Not only did they lift my spirits, they inspired me. From that moment on, whenever I had to get out of the bed for any reason, I asked to go for a walk - at first, walking with assistance from my nurse, but later on, walking on my own. I was determined to progress to one lap for every bypass. By the time I was discharged, the nurses were calling me the "Marathon Man" because I had succeeded in my plan: I walked six laps every time I went for a walk. If it had not been for my two visitors from Mended Hearts, I might not have had the desire to get to walking as much as I did. They were my inspiration.