Support and solace for heart patients
Sometimes it takes a different kind of medicine to heal a heart.
That’s what George Frongillo discovered after the first of his two serious cardiac episodes.
“I really struggled emotionally because I didn't understand why a 68-year-old man would be spared and children die every day,” said Frongillo, who lives in Mashpee with his wife, Kathy, and is now 73. “And so, it was kind of like a survivor's guilt thing that I went through, and I was trying to find somebody to talk to because it was really consuming me.”
In his discharge paperwork from Cape Cod Hospital, Frongillo discovered a brochure left by a representative of Mended Hearts, an international nonprofit that offers peer support for cardiovascular patients and their caregivers. When he contacted the local chapter, they were able to help him connect with a counselor, as well as a local support group that met at the hospital.
“Three months later, I was feeling a lot better about myself and what had happened and all that,” Frongillo said. He was so impressed he and his wife joined Mended Hearts and began attending the support group that met monthly at Cape Cod Hospital. Now, he’s chapter president and trying to spread the word while reinvigorating the group after COVID-19 limitations.
Before the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, Mended Hearts volunteers, who had all experienced cardiovascular disease or surgery, were visiting patients on the cardiac floor at the hospital and leading the support group that attracted up to 40 people monthly. Their goal was not to give medical advice, but to educate and lend emotional support. Volunteers worked from a list provided by nurses and stopped by patients' rooms, Frongillo said.
“[We would] visit with them, and just have a conversation about, ‘Hey, we've been there. We know what you're going through. Certainly, from an emotional and psychological standpoint, we can understand where your mind is and what you're going through and what your fears are,’” he said.
It’s difficult for many cardiac patients to get over the fear that they will have another heart attack or cardiac episode, Frongillo said.
“Every time you feel something in your body, you think it's another heart attack,” Frongillo said. “You always think you're the only person that's going through it, but we all go through it. We're all scared to death after our first heart attack, and then you start to understand that part of it is you're listening to your body closer than you ever listened before because you're afraid.”
Depression and anxiety are common side effects of cardiac disease, according to Cardiologist Elissa Thompson, MD, medical director of Cape Cod Healthcare’s cardiac rehabilitation program. The shock of a near-death experience and the fear of another serious event can create a mindset similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, she said, and the peer support provided through Mended Hearts provides empathetic care.
“Mended Hearts is a really great program where people who have been through something can talk to other people who are going through things,” she said. “They can really initiate or get that ball rolling so that people are able to think of themselves as they once thought of themselves, and not be afraid of the unknown.”
Support from Mended Hearts can help post-treatment patients understand that they're healthier now, Dr. Thompson said. “And it really helps to motivate people out of what can oftentimes be a very isolating situation,” she said.
Frongillo had his first cardiac arrest in 2016, when he collapsed while watching a movie with his wife. Although EMTs were able to restart his heart, doctors at Cape Cod Hospital worried about neurological damage after he had gone seven to 10 minutes without a heartbeat. They treated him using a machine called an Arctic Sun, which cooled his body temperature to 90 degrees for 24 hours, giving his body time to heal. His second heart attack was in March, which required him to be airlifted for treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he spent 35 days.
Now, he’s feeling pretty darn good. “By the grace of God and the prayers of an unbelievable support network, I'm still alive, and if you saw me today, you would never know that anything happened,” he said. And as the local chapter’s new president, he’s on a mission to get Mended Hearts up and active again.
“Once the pandemic came, everything shut down. We couldn't go in and visit, we couldn't have our meetings at Cape Cod Hospital,” he said. Now, the local chapter holds Zoom support groups the third Thursday of every month and is looking toward the future.
“We're doing leadership meetings every week to talk about next steps to really ramp up the presence and awareness of Mended Hearts as an organization on the Cape,” Frongillo said. That includes presentations at cardiac rehabilitation sites, updating the local chapter’s website and printing new brochures he hopes to distribute in cardiology practices throughout the Cape. They also hope to develop a phone program and get back to visiting patients at the hospital.
Frongillo is an evangelist for a program he says helped save him and his wife.
“It was cathartic,” he said. “You were able to go in and you were able to talk to somebody and they'd say, ‘Yeah, you know what? I had an event similar to that,’ or, ‘This is what I went through and this is how I felt,’ and you could relate to it. And as you exchanged information and kind of swapped stories, I was like, ‘Wow, I'm not alone in this.’ And that was huge.”
Anyone wishing for more information on Mended Hearts can contact George Frongillo, gnfrongillo@gmail.com, 774-245-7674, or Ann Sarno, ann.sarno@yahoo.com, 508-776-8635. The Mended Hearts support group meets the third Thursday of the month over Zoom.
