Equatorial Guinea, Ireland, Mongolia, Albania, Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, Jordan — these are just a few of the countries Sally Nist traveled to, and sometimes lived in, during her 20 years as an employee of the State Department. For a long time, globetrotting was literally her vocation. And now, traveling for pleasure is one of her great loves and ambitions.
Originally from Rapid City, Sally called Alexandria, Virginia home for much of her adult life. She retired there in 2008, but recently began to experience a series of heart-related health setbacks that left her in a bind and seriously imperiled her ability to travel.
“I came back to Rapid City about a year ago because I had had a number of health issues and I was in the hospital,” Sally said. “And my family from here — which includes my son, my daughter, my granddaughter — kept taking turns coming back to Alexandria to help me when I got out of the hospital. And so, they finally said, ‘You have to move back to Rapid City. We can’t just keep coming out here whenever you get sick, because you’ve been sick all the time.’ And so, I said, ‘Okay, fine.’ I had lived there for close to 40 years, so it was real hard to leave.”
As soon as she was settled in Rapid City, Sally contacted Monument Health’s Heart and Vascular Institute (HVI) at Rapid City Hospital and requested an appointment with distinguished Interventional Cardiologist Joseph Tuma, M.D., FACC, FSCAI, who came highly recommended by several family members and acquaintances. Sally was informed by HVI that she would be matched with a cardiologist based on an assessment of her records. Her care team was ultimately composed of several physicians from HVI, including Non-Invasive Cardiologist Stephen Wasemiller, M.D., Medical Director of the Advanced Heart Failure program Luis Hernandez, M.D., FACC, Electrophysiologist Ethan P. Levine, D.O., FHRS and, eventually, Dr. Tuma himself.
This multi-physician, team approach really stuck out to Sally as a major difference maker. “It just seemed to me like everybody was talking with one another and thinking about how to help me,” she said. “When I left Virginia, I couldn’t walk from my house to the corner, which was like, one house. I couldn’t go up my stairs without somebody literally pulling me up the stairs. So that’s where I was starting; I was not functioning all that great. I have a Welsh Springer Spaniel, Winnie. We compete in dog shows and she is the top novice Welsh in the country right now. I had gone to a dog show in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and I was doing Rally, which is maybe seven minutes of just walking around the ring. And I literally had to go to a chair. I was just exhausted.”
The HVI team ran tests and modified and added to Sally’s medications. “In Virginia, they did a test where they showed that I had two heart valves that weren’t doing so great,” she recalled. “At Monument Health, they said, ‘Well, I think a pacemaker would help that left side of your heart to work better.’” She agreed to the pacemaker, which would help regulate her heartbeat and manage her atrial fibrillation. The procedure, which Dr. Levine performed, was relatively simple considering the extent of Sally’s heart issues. “They just stick it under your skin. It’s stuck into my heart,” she explained. “And so, for six weeks, you can’t raise your arm above your head, and you have to wear a little sling at night, because they don’t want you to move your left arm — because it might jiggle loose the pacemaker — until the heart kind of grows around it and holds that wire in place.”
Sally was due to go on two separate upcoming vacations, which had been planned before she started treatment. To complicate matters, the trips were occurring pretty much back-to-back. “When I talked to Dr. Levine, I said, ‘Listen, you’ve got to work with me here, because I’ve got two big trips planned. When I go to Hawaii, I’m going to go up to Mauna Kea to do a star gazing trip. Then I’m going to the Mediterranean and I’ve got a dog show in between those.’ He was so sweet. He said, ‘You’re going to do just fine with this pacer. I can tell just talking to you because that’s your mindset.’”
After roughly four months of treatment at HVI, Sally embarked on her two vacations. “Those trips were strenuous. I was very happy because I could keep up,” she said. “I walked easily for hours on every tour. And we signed up for something every day, of course, because that’s what you do. My daughter had gotten these quaint B&Bs to stay in, which sounds great because they’re so quiet, except that they’re like, three floors up in buildings without elevators. So, we’re dragging these dumb suitcases up three flights, and I could do that, too, thanks to my pacer, and thanks to my meds and thanks to the cardio rehab. Now one of my valves is fine. It’s normal. I feel better than I have felt in years and years and years. I’m very happy with everything that’s happened to me at Monument Health.”
Thanks to the care she received at HVI, Sally can pursue her retirement journeys with renewed vigor. “I travel a lot with my dog, because I have to drive forever and a century to go to a show.
No matter where you go around here, it’s really far,” Sally said. “Also, for several years I have completed three-week work projects with Global Volunteers. I have worked in Cuba twice, Costa Rica twice and once in Italy. All of these projects were mainly teaching English but because we live within the communities — often at private homes — we seem to get more than we give. I was reluctant to sign up for that project again, but now that I feel so great, I plan to do so next summer.”
There is, though, one small complaint Sally has expressed to HVI. “When I first went to see Dr. Hernandez, — who I loved — I said, ‘I hate the name of your group.’ And he says, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘It’s called the Heart Failure Group. It makes me feel so sad.’ And so later, I got a letter from him, and Heart Failure is crossed off, and instead it says, Heart Success.”
Story: Kory Lanphear
Photos: Bob Slocum