As Tommie Stewart was lying in his hospital bed waiting to have heart bypass surgery, two strangers walked in.

They were neither doctors nor nurses. But the visitors, who were Mended Hearts volunteers, helped put his mind at ease all the same.

“I was kind of leery about the whole operation,” said Stewart, a Hall County resident.

“They were able to answer my main questions about what was going to happen. That was a relief.”

Although his surgeon could answer his questions from a medical standpoint, there were still gaps in Stewart’s understanding.

“A doctor can tell you what is going to be done, but they don’t know how you are going to feel,” Stewart said.

“They (Mended Hearts volunteers) knew exactly how I was going to feel because they’d gone through the same process that I did.”

That comfort and bedside support that he received is exactly what led Stewart and many others to become Mended Hearts volunteers through the Ronnie Green Heart Center at Northeast Georgia Medical Center.

It is also what earned the group a President’s Cup award from the national headquarters.

Mended Hearts is a “nationwide support organization for individuals with heart disease, including: persons recovering from heart attacks, angioplasty or open heart surgery.”

“I had been volunteering in the emergency room, but after I had my bypass surgery, I decided I should go to Mended Hearts because I’d get the personal reward of being able to help somebody else more so than I could in the emergency room,” Stewart said.

As a regular participant in the Peachtree Road Race, Ernie Fellers was pretty active and never anticipated having trouble with his heart. But he did, and he was glad to have Mended Hearts to lean on for support.

“I started having chest pains,” Fellers remembers.

“About three weeks after the Peachtree in 2003, I was at the (medical center) and they did a (cardiac catheterization) on me and decided to do open-heart surgery. I had nine blockages.

“While I was in the heart center, Mended Hearts volunteers came to visit me and told me about their group and their monthly meetings.”

Due to complications with his recovery, Fellers ended up in the hospital for 10 days instead of the usual three. His extended stay happened to coincide with the group’s support meeting, so after getting permission from his doctor to attend, Fellers was “wheeled into the meeting.”

He’s now the local chapter’s president.

About half of the group’s membership visits hospital-bound patients and follows up with them after they’re released, if the patient is interested. Yet that isn’t a requirement to joining the group.

You don’t even have to become an official “member,” but you can if you’d like. The annual membership dues are around $30.

“We’re really just a support group,” said Victor Dube, the group’s vice president.

“Once you have a heart procedure, you’re not cured. You’re maintaining.

“People can talk about their problem and the kinds of medicines they’re taking and their reactions to the medicines with people who have been there.

“If you have a question, there are 60 people in the room and one of them probably has the answer or has experienced the same thing.”

The support group isn’t limited to just heart patients, as Judy Dube discovered.

“I was a caregiver,” said Judy Dube, who arranges guest speakers for the meetings. “Sometimes, it (seems like) it can be harder on the caregiver than the patient.”

“We have members who were caregivers and their spouse has passed away, but they still come to the meetings,” Fellers said.

In addition to talking with each other, attendees get the opportunity to gather information from experts.

If visitors decide to join the group, they don’t have to worry about being harassed for donations or forced to commit to visiting patients. The meetings are free and attendees can decide their own comfort levels when it comes to participation.

“Sometimes we have people come to our meetings who never plan on visiting patients,” Judy Dube said. “But then after a few months, they decide they’d like to give it a try. You decide things on your own time.”

The volunteers who do take the extra step to help others along their road to recovery hold a special place in Victor Dube’s heart.

“I had my surgery in New York, but there wasn’t a Mended Hearts group up there,” he said.
“We (wife Judy and I) went through a real rough time not knowing what was going on and there was no one there to tell us.

“I had a great surgeon, but he didn’t know anything about recovery — the personal and emotional side about a man losing his ability to be the supplier of support for his family. All of a sudden, I had to rely on Judy. It really changed my whole perspective of what a man is supposed to be.”

“We kind of reversed roles when he had the surgery,” Judy Dube said.

“A lot of patients go through depression, so it helps to have other people to talk to — people who have gone through it, too.”