Healthy Heart Gift Card

Perfect for Valentine’s Day, the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s has a Healthy Heart Gift Card you can present to anyone who’d like to have their cardiovascular fitness assessed. For $399, the gift card entitles the holder to:

• A wellness profile – cardiovascular risk assessment, depression survey, diet survey, exercise and activity survey, cardiovascular health and risk education
• Physical examination
• Diagnostic tests – cholesterol, EKG, ultrasound
• Lifestyle modification programs – smoking cessation, exercise, diet, stress management programs
• Specialist referrals

The Texas Heart Institute is no run-of-the-mill institution. It’s a premier heart center founded by Dr. Denton Cooley and was voted one of America’s Best Hospitals in 2006 for 16 years running. Yesterday, heart transplant patients gather at the Texas Heart Institute to celebrate living 20 or more years past their heart transplants, which far surpasses the average eight to 10 years.

Seventy-year-old Charles Washington who has lived with a transplanted heart for almost 24 years remembers how he felt at the annual Oak Ridge, TN dogwood blossom celebration shortly after receiving his new heart:

I looked up, grabbed a leaf and tears came to my eye. I thought about the beauty and tragedy of nature. It reminded me that there was tragedy about the beauty of life. The trees blooms, they die, they come back the next year in full bloom.

It’s a poignant reminder that because artificial hearts are still not advanced enough to keep people alive for very long, someone must die (usually tragically) for another to have a new chance at life through the generous donation of their organs.

NB: A Hearty Life’s parent company, b5media, is collecting donations for the American Heart Association. Click here for more information.

The Mercury News, February 13, 2007
Photo: frotzed2

Tags: texas heart institute, heart transplants, american heart association, heart, heart disease, organ donation, diseases, illness, health