{"id":23924,"date":"2025-01-17T08:30:51","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T13:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/?p=23924"},"modified":"2025-01-17T08:30:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T13:30:53","slug":"tale-with-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/tale-with-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"K Staffer Thanks Donor, Family in a Tale with Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Kalamazoo College will have an additional reason to celebrate life in February alongside Wendy Fleckenstein, K\u2019s administrative secretary to the president and provost. About four years ago, Wendy was seriously ill and awaiting a heart transplant. Now, she will be the featured survivor at an American Heart Association Go Red for Women Gala<\/a> on Friday, February 28, at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Kalamazoo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Locally, the event this year concludes American Heart Month, which raises awareness about heart disease and how to prevent it. It\u2019s a time to encourage people, especially women, to focus on their cardiovascular health with cardiovascular disease being the leading cause of death for both men and women, as well as most racial and ethnic groups, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a huge honor for me and a way to recognize the donor and his family, because without them, I wouldn’t be here to tell my story,\u201d Wendy said. \u201cI hope I can be an inspiration to anybody to get them to make sure they\u2019re staying on top of their heart health, especially if they have a family history. I think that\u2019s really key.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emerita Professor of Physical Education Jeanne Hess introduced Wendy to American Heart Association Development Director Caleb Porter when Wendy\u2019s health stabilized after the transplant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCaleb told me what they do, and he said I would be an incredible survivor story for the gala,\u201d Wendy said. \u201cThey will play a video interview of me, have a silent auction, a live auction, and an open-your-heart donation request. I\u2019m glad to be participating in it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Heart
Wendy Fleckenstein, the administrative secretary to the president and provost at Kalamazoo College, rings the heartiversary bell on the anniversary of her heart transplant.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The video will show that in January 2018, Wendy thought she had a cold. The timing was annoying considering it coincided with her first days as a K employee. It lingered for several days, forcing her to visit an urgent care facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t have an x-ray machine there, so they just said, \u2018It looks like you\u2019ve got a sinus infection. Here\u2019s an antibiotic for that,\u2019\u201d Wendy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A week later, she still wasn\u2019t well. Wendy could hear a crackling sound coming from her lungs when she tried to sleep, prompting a pneumonia scare and a trip to a second urgent care center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey did an x-ray and that doctor didn\u2019t wait for the radiologist to read it,\u201d Wendy said. \u201cShe said, \u2018Yes, there\u2019s something in your lung. Here’s an antibiotic for pneumonia.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A diagnosis more serious, though, was coming. Before she could even get home, in fact, Wendy\u2019s doctor called back with news from the radiologist and said, \u201cYou need to get back here. It\u2019s congestive heart failure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wendy was stunned. Heart conditions are common in her family, although she was still three months away from her 48th<\/sup> birthday. To her knowledge, no one that young among her relatives had ever suffered such an ailment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey never were able to figure out what caused it, other than perhaps an illness that just settled in the heart and the heart just didn’t recover,\u201d she said. \u201cThey did a nuclear stress test. They did a heart catheter and all of that showed nothing. My arteries were pristine and I did fine on the stress test.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wendy thought she was in the clear after her doctors installed a defibrillator shortly after the College\u2019s Commencement in 2018. Her condition already was responding well to medications and the procedure strictly was a safeguard in case her heart rate got too slow or she experienced cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet something happened in November 2019, a short time before the pandemic shuttered much of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe’re pretty certain that I had COVID,\u201d Wendy said. \u201cI was very sick. I was in bed for about a week with no smell, no taste, a high fever and a cough that lingered into February and March.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her heart health soon varied significantly, often from day to day, and it was quite noticeable to her family and friends that something was wrong. April 30, 2021, was her last day working at K before her health required her to take a break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLouise, one of my best friends here, told me we had to do something,\u201d Wendy said. \u201cShe said, \u2018You can’t just stay in bed. You’re not getting better,\u2019 so she picked me up and took me to the ER. I had no idea that my body was shutting down. We think now that the COVID took out my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wendy was hospitalized for six days in early May, leading her cardiologist to suggest she be moved to another facility to receive a pump called a left ventricle assistive device (LVAD). Yet upon arrival, tests found that Wendy\u2019s heart was bad on the left and right sides, leaving a transplant as the only option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her condition became dire, even grave at times. Thankfully, after some improvement helped her get well enough to potentially survive the operation and get stronger afterward, she went on the transplant list and the heart of a 16-year-old boy saved her life. Although Wendy knows her body could still reject the heart at any time, the transplant went well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don’t know anything about him,\u201d she said. \u201cI don’t know where he\u2019s from, just that a donor can be from up to about 1,200 to 1,250 nautical miles away. I really wish that I knew at least his name, his birthday and something that he liked to do. I’ve developed a passion for drawing and painting that I never had before, so I wonder whether he was an artist. I didn’t have curly hair like this before either. I asked my doctor if there was any chance this boy had curly hair. He said he didn\u2019t think there could be anything that connected our DNA, but I would rather think it\u2019s that than the medication.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wendy feels better today than she has in a long time and her recovery allows her to think of the donor and his family often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the first days when they had me up and walking around the hospital, the psychiatrist saw me in the hallway and asked me how it felt to know I had somebody else\u2019s heart beating inside me,\u201d Wendy said. \u201cI hadn\u2019t really thought about it until he asked me and I said, \u2018guilty.\u2019 I didn\u2019t know why I got to live and someone else had to die. I don’t think I knew until about the two-year mark that a kid saved my life. It hits especially as a parent, knowing that because of him, and because of their decision to donate his heart to me, there are so many things I get to do that they will not experience with him. They\u2019ll never see him graduate high school or college, get married, have children. Their holidays will never be the same. I just decided that this young life saved me and I was going to fight to get back. I do everything I can to live my life and celebrate him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no guarantee Wendy will ever meet the donor\u2019s family, although she has opportunities to write to them despite not knowing their names. It ultimately will be up to the family to decide whether they want to meet her, but if she has the chance one day, she will tell them how grateful she is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would tell them how much their gift means, not only to me, but to my family,\u201d Wendy said. \u201cIt would\u2019ve destroyed my mom to lose a child, so just to be here is so special. I’m so proud of my kids and what they\u2019re doing in their lives, and to watch them be parents is just the greatest feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wendy said that if not for having to fill a big medicine box every month, she wouldn\u2019t know she has a heart problem anymore. Because of that and more, she\u2019s eager to tell her story at the gala.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI probably don\u2019t work out as much as I should, but I try to keep the donor and his family in my mind every day,\u201d she said. \u201cBeing asked to share my story with the American Heart Association is so important with their mission to educate women about heart health and how to get the help that they need. I never realized until the last few years that women are at the highest risk for cardiovascular issues, and the symptoms of a heart attack for women are different than they are for men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had no clue that I was so sick, and when you get the rug pulled out from under you, you realize you might not get a chance to do the things you want to do again. It\u2019s overwhelming and pretty scary, so I\u2019ll just say to live your life to the fullest, love your family and friends, and tell people you love them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wendy Fleckenstein will be the featured survivor at an American Heart Association Go Red for Women Gala on February 28 at the Radisson in Kalamazoo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":23934,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[233,3],"tags":[40],"post_formats":[],"class_list":["post-23924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-staff","category-news","tag-staff"],"yoast_head":"\r\nHeart Transplant Story Spotlights K Staffer - News and Events<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Wendy Fleckenstein will be the featured survivor at an American Heart Association Go Red for Women Gala on Friday, February 28, in Kalamazoo.\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/tale-with-heart\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"K Staffer Thanks Donor, Family in a Tale with Heart\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wendy Fleckenstein will be the featured survivor at an American Heart Association Go Red for Women Gala on Friday, February 28, in Kalamazoo.\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/tale-with-heart\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"News and Events\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/KalamazooCollege\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-01-17T13:30:51+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-01-17T13:30:53+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/files\/2025\/01\/Ringing-the-Bell-on-a-Heartiversary_fb-scaled.jpg\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1440\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andy Brown\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"K Staffer Thanks Donor, Family in a Tale with Heart\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@kcollege\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@kcollege\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andy Brown\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/tale-with-heart\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/tale-with-heart\/\",\"name\":\"Heart Transplant Story Spotlights K Staffer - 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aria-label=\"archive of category Faculty & Staff\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/category\/faculty-staff\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Faculty & Staff<\/a><a aria-label=\"archive of category News Stories\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/category\/news\/\" rel=\"category tag\">News Stories<\/a>","tags_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/tag\/staff\/\" rel=\"tag\">staff<\/a>","social_share_info":"<a data-share=\"facebook\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/tale-with-heart\/\" class=\"pl-facebook-share social-share-default pl-social-share\" target=\"_blank\"><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-f\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i><\/a><a data-share=\"twitter\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/tale-with-heart\/\" class=\"pl-twiiter-share social-share-default pl-social-share\" target=\"_blank\"><i class=\"fab fa-twitter\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i><\/a><a data-share=\"linkedin\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/shareArticle?url=https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/tale-with-heart\/\" class=\"pl-linkedin-share social-share-default pl-social-share\" target=\"_blank\"><i class=\"fab fa-linkedin-in\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i><\/a>","wordExcerpt_info":"<p>Wendy Fleckenstein will be the featured survivor at an American Heart Association Go Red for Women Gala on February 28 at the Radisson in Kalamazoo.<\/p>\n","comment_info":"No Comments","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23924"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23936,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23924\/revisions\/23936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23924"},{"taxonomy":"post_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_formats?post=23924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}