The Patient Experience

Loyola is committed to compassionate patient care, and recognizes that undergoing treatment for heart and vascular disease can be a difficult time for patients and their families.

The following stories are from patients of the Center for Heart & Vascular Medicine. Read their stories and see how the center has had a positive impact on people's lives.

Daryl's Story: "I Love You" Meant Everything Was Okay
Jerry's Story: This is Jerry. He Likes to Run.

“I Love You” Meant Everything Was Okay
A moment. That’s all it took to change the world for Daryl Travis, a successful, 40-something branding strategist who lives and works in downtown Chicago with his wife, Donnita. Healthy and fit, Daryl exercised regularly, ate the right foods and received a clean bill of health after each physical, until a routine checkup in late 1999 changed his world. That is when Daryl’s internist heard an odd sound in his heartbeat. A battery of tests revealed what no one expected – that Daryl had an aneurysm and a congenital heart valve problem requiring immediate replacement.

The first person Daryl told was Donnita. When he said it was his heart, it shattered Donnita’s world as much as it had changed Daryl’s.

As the CEO of a Chicago-based branding firm, Daryl knew what he and Donnita had to do first – conduct research to find the most experienced team of cardiologists and vascular surgeons for Daryl’s valve replacement surgery. They sent videotapes of Daryl’s heart to the top cardiovascular centers nationwide, conducted extensive telephone interviews of those teams and compared each center’s performance. What they found was that the team performing as many – if not more – heart valve replacement surgeries than any other had literally been in front of them the entire time. It was the cardiovascular team at Loyola University Health System (Loyola) in west suburban Chicago. Loyola’s heart and vascular program, built on a tradition of excellence and innovation, brings together nationally known specialists and the latest treatments to provide patients the best in comprehensive heart and vascular care.

Confident in Loyola’s qualifications, he found comfort in the care Loyola’s team took to treat him as an individual, answer his questions factually and help him face the challenges ahead. After meeting with the team of specialists who would be involved in his surgery, Daryl was ready to get the procedure behind him.

For Donnita, the time spent waiting for her husband to come out of surgery seemed to last a lifetime. But when she finally saw Daryl in the recovery room, she knew they had made the right choice. Awake and alert but unable to speak, Daryl communicated the best way he knew how – by spelling out the words “I love you” in Donnita’s hand. “That’s when I knew everything was okay,” she recalled. “Now I truly understand what they mean when they say we also treat the human spirit.”

Today, Daryl has a clean bill of health and is back at his peak. The moment that changed the world for Daryl and Donnita was actually the start of a new life, thanks to the cardiovascular team at Loyola.

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This is Jerry. He Likes to Run.
A distance runner averaging 1,500-2,000 miles each of the past 20 years, Jerry Allanach understands the importance of listening to your body. But when his breathing became so labored during races that he had to walk instead of run, he forgot to listen. He blamed himself instead. Perhaps he was starting out too fast, not working out hard enough, or just getting old. Jerry even started wearing a heart rate monitor during his runs. When the monitor registered 235, he bought a new one. But the new heart monitor continued to show what Jerry thought were absurdly high readings.

One day while watching the monitor during his run rather than at the end of the run, Jerry noticed an odd occurrence – just before his breathing got short, his heart rate would spike to more than 200. That’s when he decided it was time he listened to his body. A visit to his doctor showed that Jerry suffered from atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm that worsened during his runs, especially in the summer. Not sure if drugs would help and not ready to stop running, Jerry went online to find others with the same condition and get recommendations. The best advice, however, came from his primary care physician who referred Jerry to an electrophysiologist, a physician specializing in abnormal heart rhythms, at Loyola. “He helped me understand my condition and weigh the options available for treatment,” says Jerry. Loyola’s electrophysiology team is recognized as leaders in the care of patients with heart rhythm disorders.

On Aug. 29, 2003, Jerry underwent a procedure called radiofrequency catheter ablation, a non-surgical technique that destroys (ablates) parts of the abnormal electrical pathway in the heart causing abnormal heart rhythms. Just five days after the successful procedure and with permission from his physician, Jerry went for a light jog. He gradually increased his duration and pace during the months that followed before taking his “test drive” in November, running a 10K in 46 minutes, and a 5K in 22 minutes a few weeks later. “That’s pretty respectable for a 54-year old,” said Jerry. “More important is that there were no abnormal spikes in my heart rate.”

Less than five months after his procedure, Jerry was back running marathons, completing his 49th in 3 hours, 44 minutes. He no longer takes the medications that were initially prescribed and completed his 50th marathon, one that required running up and down mountains. By listening to his body and entrusting his heart to Loyola, Jerry is back in the race – running, not walking.

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