HEART TO HEART
Eldorado author coaches open-heart patients through surgery, recovery

By Diana Heil
The New Mexican

Maggie Lichtenberg was born with a heart problem called Epstein’s Anomaly. It didn’t cause her any trouble until she was 53 and in the thick of a high-powered, East Coast publishing career.
Medication quickly eased her irregular heartbeat, and she had long stretches of carefree living.
Eventually, she moved to Santa Fe , reconfigured her career and enjoyed picnics at 11,000 feet in the Sangre de Cristo mountains with the man she loved. Her new life seemed ideal, and then the symptoms returned.
Lichtenberg wasn’t worried, even though Santa Fe cardiologist Dr. Grant La Farge warned her one day she might need to repair the valve that was making the right atrium of her heart irritable.
At the New Mexico Heart Institute in Albuquerque , in 1997, she underwent a procedure called radio-frequency ablation, which restored a normal rhythm to her heart. No medication needed. Again, she had a few more years of carefree living

By 1999, a new kind of disturbance began. This time, when her heart went off kilter, her throat constricted. She was pain-stricken and immobilized for hours, until the symptoms subsided. Attacks often came at night and she couldn’t sleep. Lichtenberg worried the throat problem could stall her speaking engagements. She had to seek help.
The medication and treatments that worked before weren’t effective now, and her condition worsened. Doctors said she had a leaky valve in her heart that needed to be repaired. While pondering the prospect of open-heart surgery, Lichtenberg became meticulous about gathering all the facts. In 2003, by the time she packed her bags in 2003 for the Mayo Clinic, she felt she knew full well what she was in for.
Please see HEART, Page D-2

Maggie Lichtenberg’s book,The Open Heart Companion,is now distributed to each open-heart surgery patient at St. Vincent Regional Medical Center . She also coaches patients from her home in Eldorado.
Photos by Susánica Tam/The New Mexican

While pondering the prospect of open-heart surgery, Lichtenberg became meticulous about gathering all the facts, but she failed to prepare herself for the recovery process.

Heart: Author is now “an open-heart coach”
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She had quizzed the surgeon on just how he would open her rib cage and what kind of scar he would leave behind. She had gone down the checklist of things to do to help make the operation go smoothly, and she had listened to a pre-surgery relaxation tape. And since her cardiologist had told her insurance company that only the Mayo Clinic surgeon could perform the operation, she had coverage for the out-of-state procedure.
It wasn’t until she was back at home that Lichtenberg first realized she had overlooked an important part of the picture.
She hadn’t prepared herself for the next phase: the difficult four-to-eight week transition from open-heart surgery to full recovery.
“Resting late one afternoon a few weeks after my homecoming, droopy and irritable about the realities of open-heart convalescence, I began to itemize in my mind the things I might have investigated in advance,” she wrote in The Open Heart Companion: Preparation and Guidance for Open-Heart Surgery Recovery. “True, I had established some excellent links to professional specialists. But I hadn’t asked questions about recovery. That weary day I acknowledged how little I had known about the challenges now facing me. Had I been told to be on the lookout for conditions like serious constipation, excessive fatigue, and symptoms of depression, I would have acted sooner to get advice about nipping those rascals in the bud.” Lichtenberg is dedicated to helping others avoid the same mistake.
Not only did she self-publish a book on the subject, she also set up a free newsletter and telephone support group for recovering heart patients, all through the Internet.
“People don’t realize that being in a community can be so nourishing,” Lichtenberg said.
On June 17, at Borders Books, Lichtenberg will speak at a book signing celebration. She has become an “open-heart coach” with a mission to help others move quickly from denial to action. Cardiovascular disease is, after all, the leading killer of American men and women.
In Santa Fe, St. Vincent Regional Medical Center — where she went for cardiac rehabilitation — now includes her 192-page handbook in its packet for heart-surgery patients.
“We give out her book to all of our patients,” said Francie Handler, a nurse and case manager for open-heart surgery patients.
“Everything she has in there is right on.” Because many patients skip the pre-operation clinic, they often don’t get the book until they are discharged.
“They’re usually really grateful to get it,” Handler said.
Because some patients live in rural areas of New Mexico, without telephone service or electricity, Handler inquires about their home situation when she talks to patients about pre-paring for recovery.

In one case, the hospital helped a patient who had no insurance coverage get rent assistance, medication, oxygen and a home nurse.
“Everything they need we can get, practically,” Handler said. “We try to get all of this started early on.” For Lichtenberg, the lack of a comfortable home setting wasn’t an issue. What she needed was something far less tangible: patience. And she wound up in the emergency room because of it.
The doctors warned her that she might have an irregular heart rhythm for at least three months after surgery. Instead of finding solace in that, she decided to take charge when she became annoyed by a fluttering heart beat only five weeks after surgery.
Without consulting a doctor, she took a large dose of the anti-arrhythmic medication, followed by a second large dose an hour later, reasoning that it was the right thing to do because it had worked before the surgery.
She overdosed and her heart-beat fell to a dangerously low level. “I felt the energy draining out of me fast, as if I were dying...,” she wrote.
The episode was handled in the nick of time, and Lichtenberg took the lesson seriously.
That day, she had forgotten to quiet her mind and ask for guidance from deep within before taking the dangerous doses of medication.
“I’ve come to believe more than ever that we need to trust our gut assessment on any important matter,” she wrote.
These days, Lichtenberg can clearly see what happened during her recovery process.
“Every day, you need to wake up and remind yourself to be patient,” she said.
If she had to go through the ordeal again, Lichtenberg said she would be more “real” with herself. She wouldn’t wait years to accept the truth that some-thing serious was going on with her heart.
After surgery, Lichtenberg would surround herself with affirmations written on colorful index cards: “I celebrate my life and my heart’s restored health,” or “Soon I will be back hiking the beautiful Santa Fe trails.” To stave off depression, she would stay in touch with more friends and be grateful for what she had.
She would not forego her morning spiritual practice the way she did before. “I would not wait to be shocked, (and wonder) where is God in all of this?” she said.

Courtesy image
In addition to her book, Lichtenberg set up a free newsletter and phone support group for recovering heart patients.