National Women’s Health Week is a time to highlight women’s health issues and encourage women of all ages to prioritize their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. In honor of Women's Health Week we share Shirlee Patrick's story:
For more than 30 years, Shirlee’s heart has given her trouble. “I’ve had heart issues since I was 40 and it’s progressively gotten worse,” Shirlee said. In 2006, she had a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted that she credits with saving her life at least five times.
However, in 2020, Shirlee’s heart started deteriorating more, and her medicines were changed as a result. That worked for about two years, but then, “somewhere along the way, my cardiologist found a leaky valve,” she said. Shirlee was hospitalized with what felt to her like congestive heart failure. At that point, Shirlee was referred to the Heart Lung Vascular Institute at UT Medical Center where she met with Muddassir Mehmood, MD, a cardiologist and heart failure specialist who began treating her.
By 2022, “I couldn’t walk twenty feet from the living room to the kitchen counter,” she said. “I couldn’t breathe or work.” It was so bad that Shirlee eventually had to quit her part-time job as a barista at Starbucks. After an ultrasound, she met with a surgeon but found out that she wasn’t a candidate for open heart surgery. Valve replacement was also out of the question. Another cardiologist, Carmelo Venero, MD, suggested the MitraClip, a small clip that’s attached to the heart’s mitral valve to help it close more completely, restoring normal blood flow.
"MitraClip is a minimally invasive procedure to treat patients with clinically significant mitral regurgitation refractory to medical therapy," Dr. Mehmood said. "At UT Medical Center’s Heart Failure clinic we take a patient-centric multidisciplinary approach to maximize medical therapy to help improve heart function and mitral regurgitation. We work collaboratively with our Structural Heart Clinic for patients needing MitraClip despite maximal medical therapy. It was highly rewarding to see Shirlee transform her heart failure journey into heart success," he added.
In January 2023, Shirlee had the clip implanted in a relatively easy procedure. “Just one overnight in the hospital and then recovery at home,” she said. And the results were what she and her care team had hoped for. “It was like night and day immediately,” Shirlee said. “I walked around the hospital floor easily.” And though it took time to get her strength back, “I can walk across the room now and not feel like I’m dying,” she said. “Cleaning my house was a nightmare before. It took me three days!”
While the MitraClip is not a cure and Shirlee still has heart issues, “I recommend it to anyone who’s a candidate,” she said. Shirlee credits her cardiac team, including Drs. Baljepally, Venero, Mehmood and their teams for improving her life. “They are the greatest bunch of people. They helped me with the whole process,” she said. “I love Dr. Mehmood. He’s a teaching doctor and he keeps me posted on what’s coming up, new drugs and what’s new in treatments.”
Shirlee also enjoys being a trendsetting poster child of sorts. “There were no signs on the wall about the mitral clip until after I had the procedure. Now there are!,” she said.
Thanks for sharing your story, Shirlee, and we continue to wish you all the best!