On Melinda Hull’s first day as a nurse at ThedaCare, she said she felt emotional as she watched a solemn procession move through the corridors.
The procession was an honor walk. The reverential ceremony, held to honor an organ donor, carried special meaning for her. That’s because she is the beneficiary of an organ donation. She’s a heart transplant recipient.
“I had a really hard time for the longest time thinking, somebody else died in order for me to live,” Hull said. “But it’s what you do from here and moving forward that makes the opportunity, the second chance at life, worth it.”
What Hull has done with her second chance is become a registered nurse at ThedaCare Regional Medical Center-Neenah. More than a decade earlier, 12 years ago to be more precise, she was in a hospital bed awaiting word of a potential donated heart to replace her failing one.
Melinda’s Journey
Hull’s heart health issues started during college at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. She was enrolled in the school’s College of Nursing.
“I graduated from New London High School in 2007 and when I was picking my college, I really wanted to pick a place that had nursing and softball,” she said. UW-Oshkosh offered both. “I always had an interest in the medical field. I knew I wanted to start helping people. That’s kind of cliché but I just knew that caregiving and being part of people’s lives was something that I wanted to do.”
Recounting her health experience, Hull said it was November of 2011, her last semester of the nursing program, when she felt something was amiss. She kept experiencing what she thought were heart palpitations.
“I started having weird feelings in my chest and it always seemed to occur when I was working,” she said. “I worked at a nursing home in New London. I would be doing my work and then all of a sudden, my heart would skip a beat and I would hurry and try to sit down and listen to it. I could never catch it.”
Her symptoms persisted.
“I wasn’t able to sleep. I started getting what felt like hot flashes,” she said. “I was thinking, ‘this is kind of weird.’”
Her symptoms worsened.
As Hull was heading toward her professor’s office one day in February of 2012, she experienced a health episode.
“I felt like I was going to pass out,” she said. “I remember the dean walking through and she was like, ‘Hi Melinda, good morning,’ and I couldn’t even say good morning. I just smiled and waved at her. I made it a little bit further down the hall and I just passed out.”
The professor and other college staff helped Hull to her feet. She was taken to the hospital where doctors diagnosed Hull with heart failure. She was just 23 years of age. Being so young, she questioned the diagnosis.
Heart failure occurs when the heart muscle doesn’t pump blood as well as it should. It can result in fluid buildup in the lungs. Heart failure symptoms may include but aren’t limited to:
- Shortness of breath with activity or when lying down
- Fatigue and weakness
- Swelling in the legs, ankles and feet
- Rapid or irregular heartbeat
- Reduced ability to exercise
Hull was transferred to ThedaCare Regional Medical Center-Appleton where cardiovascular care experts confirmed her heart failure diagnosis.
“They told me my heart was expanded like the size of a football,” Hull said. “They needed to diurese me, which is essentially pulling fluid out of my heart and lungs. I was there for five days and in those five days they pulled three and a half liters of fluid from my heart and lungs.”
Eventually Hull would be discharged from the hospital. She was prescribed medication to help shrink her heart and ease the buildup of fluid. It worked for a while but additional steps were necessary. Her doctor recommended more advanced care.
Hull was referred to Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin. The health network provides additional care to ThedaCare patients for services such as heart and lung transplants and advanced heart failure, with ThedaCare providing collaborative care locally before and after.
While at Froedtert, doctors implanted a pacemaker in Hull’s heart. A pacemaker is a device that can be used to help manage heart failure. It can help improve the heart’s pumping efficiency and ease symptoms.
The treatment worked for a while, enabling Hull to graduate from nursing school. A nursing career seemed well within her grasp. Then, her health again began to fail.
“I graduated in April, walked across the stage in May,” she said. “Then I was doing pretty good but by July I started going downhill. I went from about 210 pounds down to about 150 pounds and at that time I had had less than 15% of my heart function.”
Hull would need a heart transplant. But first, she would undergo Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) surgery. The implanted device helps pump blood from the left ventricle of the heart to the rest of the body. The patient wears an external controller unit and battery pack.
While the device was a positive step for treating her ailing heart, it was a hurdle over which she could not leap when it came to taking her state board exam – the test nursing graduates take to become certified as registered nurses.
She was told by the state she could not bring anything with her into the exam hall, that included her LVAD device.
“My surgeons, my coordinator, my doctors, my cardiologist, they all wrote letters supporting me and explaining the need for my device,” Hull said. “They all expressed how important it was that I had to be plugged into this device.”
Hull’s doctors even offered to alter the device to help alleviate any concerns that it could be used to unfairly aid Hull.
“My doctors said, ‘we can strip it down so it’s just the wires. You can see that there’s no notes on it or anything questionable,’” Hull said. “The State of Wisconsin told me that under no circumstances can you bring anything in with you.”
Hull would put her board exam and her dream of becoming a registered nurse on the backburner where it would simmer for about a dozen years as she focused on her heart health. Eventually, a major concern would require immediate attention – the LVAD was failing. She would need it replaced and then soon after would require a heart transplant.
A New Heart, a New Beginning
A heart transplant is an operation in which a failing heart is replaced with a healthier donor heart. It is a procedure generally reserved for people whose condition hasn’t improved enough with treatments or other surgeries.
More than 4,000 people in the United States are waiting for a new heart, according to Donate Life America.
After her LVAD was replaced at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Hull was added to an organ transplant waiting list. Miraculously, it wasn’t too long before she received the call she had been hoping for.
“I got a phone call at 1:51 in the morning from my cardiologist,” she said. “He said, ‘I called to tell you that we have a heart for you.’”
Hull said it took a bit to process the news.
“I just didn’t believe it and he said, ‘I’m serious, we have a heart for you,’” Hull recalled. “I had three open heart surgeries in five months and then it ended with my transplant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.”
Hull’s health would improve after the heart transplant. She eventually resumed many of the activities she enjoyed – competitive archery, hunting, snowmobiling and coaching high school softball, to name a few.
There was still one more goal she was determined to achieve. It was a goal that had been lingering for a dozen years.
“My donor passed away in February on Valentine’s Day,” Hull said. “I wanted to honor them in the best possible way I could. So, I ended up taking my board exam in February and I passed. I went 12 and a half years from when I graduated nursing school to when I passed my board exam.”
Hull then chose to start her nursing career where her health care journey began – ThedaCare.
“My first official day in training, all of a sudden, a message came across the speaker system announcing that there was an honor walk,” Hull said. “I remember thinking I just wanted to walk up and squeeze the family and tell them that I am on the other end of what you’re going through. Obviously, you can’t do that but I just knew that out of this sad experience, something good would come from it. And I was living proof of that.”
The experience brought Hull full circle.
