Stories From Main Street: Volunteers Give Support, Encouragement To Heart Patients
UPDATED 6/3/15 AT 11:12 A.M.
NEW JERSEY (CBSNewYork) -- They're not doctors, but they sure know a thing or two about heart surgery.
In the anxious moments before open heart surgery, a patient at Morristown Medical Center might get a visit from someone who knows exactly what he is going through, WCBS 880's Sean Adams reports.
What will they feel like? What's recovery like? Victor Fabry is the president of the local chapter of the group Mended Hearts and they are there to answer these questions.
Stories From Main Street: Volunteers Give Support, Encouragement To Heart Patients
"We're really essentially a support group for heart patients," Fabry said. "In many cases, patients have either a heart attack or an event and it happens on a Monday and then Tuesday they are at the hospital and they are absolutely unprepared."
Unprepared, scared and full of questions -- but Mended Heart volunteers are there to help. They too, are former heart attack patients -- they've been there.
Volunteer John Jones was a heart attack patient himself. Today he is fit and healthy and encourages others to follow the same lifestyle.
"It's about exercise, what can I do, what can't I do. I tell them, you have to know your body," Jones said. "If you comply with your doctor's orders and you have a positive attitude, that's the key to success."
Sometimes the best medicine is a sympathetic ear and a reassuring voice.
"We're the only ones who they usually have contact with has actually survived what they are going through," Fabry said.
The group says it's needs more volunteers. For more information, visit MendedHearts.org.
