Keep on doing the things that matter to you

His doctor recommended he wear a heart monitor.

Then one day, he was moving the garbage cans in his backyard and collapsed from a heart attack. When his wife came out to check on him, Sheldon collapsed again.

Sheldon said his wife and a neighbor performed CPR until the ambulance arrived. His breathing returned, but he struggled to regain a normal heart rate.

Sheldon was in the ICU at Salem Health for three days before he was stable enough to have triple bypass surgery to address a blockage in his arteries. The surgeon implanted a pacemaker and a defibrillator.

“Finally, the heart started to hold a rhythm,” Sheldon said.

While recovering, Sheldon developed hernias, and needed an emergency abdominal surgery in December.

“There were three times the hospital saved my life,” he said.

Motivation during recovery

Sheldon jokes at this point, all the ambulance drivers in the area know his name. Despite the many medical emergencies, he was eager to continue working on his recovery. Part of his motivation is family.

“We have four new great-grandbabies. That’s the reason we moved to Salem. We were living in Redmond when our grandkids started having little ones and we were going back and forth through the snow and wind and rain and we said, this is ridiculous,” Sheldon said.

Sheldon and his wife, Reba, moved to Salem four years ago.

“We do stuff together. We both sing, we sing in a choir. We’ve been married 61 years,” he said.

The couple spent years with various church choirs. They currently practice at Calvary Baptist every Sunday afternoon.

Sheldon also enjoys spending time outdoors. He honed his love of fishing while spending 20 years as a district judge in Alaska. Sheldon said he continues to work on his balance, but still hopes to get back to fishing at Depoe Bay.

A change of heart

He’s come a long way since recovery, where even getting out of his chair was a challenge.

“I’ve just always been active and all of a sudden there were days where I just sat here,” Sheldon said.

Sheldon continued to ask doctors when he would feel like himself again. They told him to stay patient as he got back on his feet.

“I couldn’t do anything. The energy level was just so low. I love to garden. I’d go out and after 15 minutes, I was exhausted. I’m up to about two hours or better now. I can go out and putter,” he said.

Now Sheldon said people often tell him he’s looking better, and he feels better too.

“There are days I feel really good. I can work in the garden, I can go on walks,” he said.

After spending his childhood on a farm, Sheldon was eager to return to gardening. Now, his boxes of vegetables are blooming again.

In the meantime, Sheldon’s family is also growing. Another great-grandchild is on the way. He’s grateful for the care that allowed him to spend time with family again.

“God’s hand was on my life during that time, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind,” he said. “Through the surgeons, through the nursing care, through all the people who took care of me during that time.”

Emily moved in with her daughter Molly Rom, who works at Salem Health, right around the time her first grandson was born.

Emily also lives with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic heart disease that causes the walls of your heart to become thicker than normal. This condition is estimated to impact one in every 500 adults.

She spent years worrying about her health after losing two brothers to heart failure, but she often was so busy that she didn’t seek out care. And, when she did make time for appointments, she didn’t like what she heard. In fact, after seeing one particularly pessimistic doctor, she worried she could “keel over at any moment.”

When she started feeling symptoms of fatigue and having trouble breathing, it was her daughter who encouraged Emily to go to Salem Health for a second opinion.

A brighter outlook

The grandmother said that seeing cardiologist Nestor Mercado, MD, gave her peace of mind.

“He made me feel important, like my life matters, while the other doctor just didn’t talk to me about anything,” she said.

The cardiologist recommended monitoring Emily’s heart to get a clearer idea of how her condition was affecting her day-to-day. Using what they learned from the monitor, the Salem Health team worked with Emily to come up with ways to manage her condition.

Moving forward, Emily is following up with an electrophysiologist to see if a pacemaker could be a more permanent solution.

Reasons to feel hopeful

Emily said she wants to keep going for her young grandchildren: Clyde, Walter and JoJo.

“It’s so much fun. The little girl, JoJo, just makes me laugh. You’ll be sitting there and all of a sudden she’s on top of you hugging you,” she said.

The grandmother said it’s a different type of joy than raising her own children.

“They’re just hilarious. They make me realize - when you’re a mother, you’re so busy you don’t see it a lot. I remember when Clyde was first born… I just couldn’t watch him enough,” she said.

Emily and her grandkids often go to the park, and sometimes they help her in the garden.

An experienced green thumb, Emily grew up helping her family manage a five-acre garden and “getting paid in ears of corn and Pepsi.”

These days she tends to a smaller plot at home, using the home-grown vegetables in her cooking.

Now that she’s feeling more optimistic about her health, Emily sees travel in her future too.

“I really want to get an RV and just go to little towns and just hang out for a weekend, take the kids,” she said.

No matter where the journey takes her, Emily notes she and her grandchildren are a package deal.

“I took the boys one weekend to the coast, and that was a lot of fun, I enjoyed that,” she added. “They just need to have their own room!”