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Two sisters, two heart transplants and one life-saving message
After Tracie Vandenburgh received a heart transplant, she sought to find out why. Nine years later, her sister is grateful she did.
MINNEAPOLIS — For more than a month now, Lori Koch has relied on the love and support of a team of family members and medical staff at M Health University of Minnesota Hospital to help her through a holiday season plagued by heart failure.
“She has been here since before Thanksgiving,” said Koch’s daughter, Caitlin Hennen. “But Christmas did come early.”
On December 13 Koch finally received the life-changing gift she had been hoping and praying for.
“Right after she got that call, she called me at 12:04 a.m.,” Hennen said. “She said we have a heart… I was immediately in tears.”
Koch’s older sister, Tracie Vandenburgh, cried tears of joy as well, just as she had done nine years prior.
“I remember when I got my call,” said Vandenburgh, who received her own heart transplant on August 7th, 2014. “My first thought was of the other family because you never forget how you got your chance at life.”
Before that moment, Vandenburgh had spent a lot of her life wondering how long her heart – and life – might last.
“Our father died at 46,” she said. “His parents died young also. My dad’s brothers all had heart issues and most of them died at a young age as well. So when I turned 40 I wanted a full cardiac workup and I had a hard time finding a doctor to take me seriously, because I didn’t have any issues and I didn’t appear sick.”
The response of her doctors shifted several years later, during a cardiac stress test.
“The door to the room flew open,” Vandenburgh said. “They hit the red stop button, they made me sit down and they said, ‘Are you all right?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ They said, ‘No you’re not.'”
Vandenburgh says doctors discovered that her heartbeat was so erratic that she needed an implantable defibrillator. Then, in 2014, she grew so sick that she was admitted to M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Hospital, where she remained until receiving her transplant three months later.
“I think it’s incredibly important that Tracie advocated for herself, knowing her family history,” said Dr. Forum Kamdar, a transplant cardiologist for M Health Fairview.
Dr. Kamdar is part of the M Health team that performed both Tracie and Lori’s transplants.
“They were at the same hospital, same team, nine years apart,” Hennen said.
And in the time between those surgeries, the team also investigated what led to their family history.
“A lot of patients when they get diagnosed with heart failure, are misclassified,” said Meg Fraser, a transplant nurse practitioner for M Health Fairview. “We see a lot of patients who are told their heart condition is due to their pregnancy, or their high blood pressure, or something else, when it’s really genetic.”
After undergoing genetic counseling, the sisters learned that they had inherited a gene mutation called LMNA from their father.
“This mutation, specifically, causes a very significant type of heart failure,” Dr. Kamdar said. “Early screening is very important to be able to catch changes in heart function or abnormal rhythms at an early stage.”
Since then, the rest of the family has undergone testing and early screening as well.
“It is hard because it is genetic and my children have been tested, and I do have a daughter who has the marker,” Vandenburgh said. “She will most likely, somewhere in her lifetime, need a heart transplant… and that is terrifying.”
But if that day comes, Vandenburgh knows her daughter will be in good hands.
“Do you have anything you want to say?” Hennen asked her mother during a recent visit to the ICU.
“That it’s the best program ever,” Koch said. “I’m very lucky.”
Lucky for the care, the support, and the early Christmas gift from a stranger.
“If it weren’t for them my kids wouldn’t have a grandma,” Hennen said. “I wouldn’t have my mom.”
“It’s the ultimate gift,” Vandenburgh said.
On Thursday, Hennen says her Mom was able to move out of the ICU and into a room where she could finally reconnect with some of her grandkids. She won’t be discharged any time soon but says it will be a very Merry Christmas.
Family gatherings during the holidays provide an opportunity to discuss important health-related wishes and to share important family medical histories that could save lives. Here are three resources if you’re interested in discussing three key topics.
How to talk about organ donation wishes with family:
How to begin discussing – and compiling – a helpful family medical history:
How to learn more about genetic counseling:
Watch all of the latest stories from Breaking The News in our YouTube playlist:
Jerry McAfee, founder of 21 Days of Peace, said many of these kids are committing crimes for recreation and don’t understand the consequences of their actions.
MINNEAPOLIS — Community leaders say they were disheartened to see the latest string of youth crime, but they’re not shocked.
“The youth that age and younger have been participating in criminal activity long before you guys just found out,” said KG Wilson, a retired peace activist.
Wilson said the perception of kids committing crimes is hard for people to imagine.
“Nobody wanted to believe that these children this young would be doing this type of criminal activity in the community,” he said. “Instead of them listening to the few of us that we’re trying to tell them about this before it gets worse, it got worse. And then you got the taps on the hands because a lot of these kids have been doing this for years.”
Jerry McAfee has seen the same things. He’s the founder of 21 Days of Peace and works with dozens of kids to keep them on the right path.
“This behavior is not new. What is new is we are yet to be alarmed to the point that the necessary synergy is created to get ahead of that stuff and to try and stop it,” McAfee said.
He believes it’s time for a new approach.
“What we were doing three or four years ago and have been doing the last few years isn’t working. It’s getting worse. So, if it’s getting worse just stop, admit it’s not working, and let’s put something together,” he said.
McAfee said many of these kids are committing crimes for recreation and don’t understand the consequences of their actions.
“That’s the message they got to get. This is not games. This is real-life,” he said. “I don’t think there is many repercussions, and what kids deem now as fun is dangerous.”
Wilson agrees the problem is getting worse each year, and kids and teenagers need to be held accountable.
“There’s going to have to be some consequences to their actions and they’re going to have know, these children are going have to know if you do this, this is what’s going to happen to you,” Wilson said. “If that doesn’t happen, they’re going to say and think in their mind, we can do anything we want and we’re just going to get a pat on the hand.”
He said it’s not all on the parents. He said some of them have tried to get their child help, but nothing seems to work.
“A lot of times these kids have gotten so out of control that some of the parents fear them. The parents fear them,” he said.
Wilson believes people need to become neighbors again and look out for kids on their block.
“We got to start getting back to community meetings,” he said. “It’s about tough love. It’s going to have to be about tough love. You’re going to have to get tough. It’s either you’re going to let them go, let the streets have them, or you’re going to take them back yourself.”
McAfee said it might be time to air public service announcements explaining the consequences of committing crimes.
The boy had been last seen on the 2500 block of 14th Ave S.
MINNEAPOLIS — Police in Minneapolis say a 4-year-old who was reported missing has been found safe.
According to the Minneapolis Police Department, Jacob Gonzalez Orbe had been last seen around 3:40 p.m. Wednesday on the 2500 block of 14th Ave S.
In an update Monday evening, police said he was found and is safe.
This story has been updated from a previous version.
Record warming in the Gulf of Mexico led to rapid intensification that even alarmed experts.
MINNEAPOLIS — The size and scope of Hurricane Milton is now so obvious that it can be seen from space, but the speed that it grew is what has been truly breathtaking.
John Morales, a veteran hurricane specialist for NBC 6 South Florida, verbally gasped and grew emotional while watching the storm rapidly intensify.
“It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours,” Morales said on the station’s live stream. “I apologize. This is just horrific.”
That video has now gone viral not just because of Morales’ emotional reaction, but also because of his frank explanation for it.
“The seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot, record hot, as you might imagine,” Morales said. “You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you. Global warming. Climate change.”
John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences at the University of St Thomas, has been saying the same for years now.
“The warming that we’re seeing is entirely human driven,” said Abraham, who has worked with oceanographers to study and track the explosive warming of the ocean. “Think about the energy of a Hiroshima atomic bomb that ended World War II -six times that – every second for the entire year. That’s how much heat is going into the ocean.”
He says record heat in the Gulf of Mexico is exactly what’s fueling Milton.
“When we think about global warming, it’s really an energy balance problem,” Abraham said. “Ninety percent of the global warming heat ends up in the oceans, and as the ocean waters heat up, that’s what gives fuel to these storms. It increases their size, their wind speed, the rainfall and the storm surge. Parts of Florida are expected to get 18 inches of rain as Milton comes ashore.”
He sais there’s no sign of that trend slowing down. Amid all the warming in the gulf over the past 10 years, this year hit another new high. He said the implications are clear.
“We’re not going to get more storms, but the big storms are going to be bigger,” Abraham said. “We are seeing more of those big, really destructive storms because of climate change. That, along with that rapid intensification, is what scientists are really focused on.”
John Morales shared that exact concern in the wake of Hurricane Helene, he just didn’t expect his warning to be realized so soon.
“Climate change is here,” Abraham said. “We are well past the point of being able to stop climate change. But there is good news actually. We’re not past the point of being able to do something good about it. If we think about climate change, it’s going up like a rocket like this. We want to bring the curve down. We have the power to pick a more sustainable path, we just need the political will to do so.”
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