Finding Purpose Though Volunteering After Heart Surgery [Video]

She’s the cheery, smiling face inside Healthpark medical center’s gift shop. “It’s been wonderful. It’s the best day of my week so far. I enjoy coming in here. I come in early. I stay late to help Sherry out with the last customers.” However, Reba George’s huge heart nearly stopped beating around New Year’s Day 2023. She noticed pain, fatigue, and weight gain, so she went to the emergency room. “One nap away. He said, if you ever laid down, if you went to bed to lay down today, you would never woken up.”

Her lungs were filled with fluid and her heart was palpitating. Dr. Paul DiGiorgi preformed multiple complex heart procedures, but Reba was never worried. “It’s like I felt like I was being hugged, and I was safe, and I was home for the first time. I felt safe in a long long time that I knew that whatever had to be done was going to be done and God brought me to it and he’ll bring me through it,” said George.

She hardly needed pain medicine after surgery. Cardiac rehab helped her regain strength. Now that her health was back in order, “I said I’m going to come back and volunteer. I need to pay it forward. I need to make my life worth something. But what I got back is far more than what I’m giving out,” said George. “This is the first time that I’ve gotten mentally, emotionally, and physically all together. And I’ve never been this happy at now 72 than I have in my life.”

George now lives a life full of gratitude. “I always was a strong woman, but now I’m a strong woman with a great attitude. And a happy attitude. Just a happy person.” Celebrating the gifts a new day can bring.

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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries.

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