In September 2022, Tammie Davis Keebaugh, 56, had just started a new healthcare management company in Michigan—and she was busy.
“I had a lot of tasks on my plate because my company was a brand-new startup,” she says. “And I have two grandkids that are everything to me. I'm always going.”
So when Keebaugh began to experience some troubling symptoms—shortness of breath, chest pains—she chalked it up to stress. While she had a history of high blood pressure and diabetes, Keebaugh was rarely sick and had never been hospitalized.
“There were signs, but when you’re busy I guess you just push through,” she explains. “I would be walking and have to stop because I would get pains in my chest and have trouble breathing. But as soon as I would sit down and relax, it would go away.”
She also began to wake up in the middle of the night in pain; turning onto her left side would make it feel like her heart was stopping, or that she wasn’t able to breathe.
“That should have been a huge red flag. But I just kept ignoring it, until my husband was insistent that I go get checked out.”
At Keebaugh’s appointment, her results suggested she would need a diagnostic cardiac catheterization. During the procedure, Keebaugh was sedated but awake while her cardiologist guided catheters into the blood vessels in her heart to look for blockages.
Midway through the testing Keebaugh heard the cardiac fellow in the room say, “She needs open-heart surgery.”
“And that really scared me,” says Keebaugh.
Treatment and relief with a minimally invasive procedure
Keebaugh's cardiologist told her that he had found blockages and diagnosed her with coronary artery disease. She was referred to an interventional cardiologist, Dr. Amir Kaki, for evaluation.
However, instead of open heart surgery, Dr. Kaki, Director of Mechanical Circulatory Support and Complex Coronary Intervention at Henry Ford St. John Hospital in Detroit, suggested an alternative, less-invasive option with Impella, a temporary heart pump that helps improve blood flow and heart function during a high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedure to place stents in her blocked blood vessels.
“Cardiac surgery has been the standard for coronary artery disease for several decades,” says Dr. Kaki. He explains that advances in medical technology, such as Impella, can provide effective mechanical support during PCI procedures for patients with severe coronary artery disease. “So, I felt that she would be a good candidate for mechanical circulatory support.”
Dr. Kaki went through Keebaugh’s test results and explained where her blockages were—and that the Impella could help take the stress off her heart during the procedure. “All I knew was that I didn’t want open-heart surgery,” Keebaugh recalls. “So when he told me about this option, it really appealed to me.”
Two days after her visit with Dr. Kaki, Keebaugh checked into the cardiac catheterization lab for the minimally invasive procedure.
Dr. Kaki advanced Impella and tools for performing PCI through the vasculature into Keebaugh’s heart. In the heart, Impella helps maintain blood flow to the body’s organs and can help keep patients stable if blood flow is temporarily reduced during the PCI procedure. Impella is then removed after the procedure.
Keebaugh had multiple blocked blood vessels requiring many stents, and the procedure took about an hour. “We were able to relieve all of her blockages in one single setting,” recalls Dr. Kaki.
Forever grateful
When she arrived home the next day, Keebaugh noticed she felt better while walking up stairs. She could also walk longer distances and sleep better.
“I think the procedure also had a huge impact on my mental health,” Keebaugh says. “I felt like I could finally do things. I just didn’t realize how sick I was.”
She returned to work less than a week after the procedure with a new perspective.
“I can't really help anybody if I'm not well and I don't help myself,” she says. “I've always put everybody else before me; I finally realized that I had to put my health and my wellbeing first,” she says.
Reflecting on her experience with the procedure, Keebaugh closes her eyes. “Forever grateful. That’s how I sum it up. Really.”