He was an avid runner. He worked out on a daily basis. He stayed physically active in his job as a U.S. Marshal. But he couldn’t outrun his genes.
At age 58, he found himself in the hospital facing quintuple-bypassheartsurgery.
Ed Mitman who’s lived in Manning for seven years, found out that he had to have the surgery while he was in West Virginia training court bailiffs, courtroom personnel and security officers.
That was Oct. 12 of last year.
Several weeks after he came back home to Manning, he saw a cardiologist who set him up with the cardiac rehabilitation program at Clarendon Health System’s Health and Wellness Center (The Zone). He said that he believes that the primary cause of his heart disease was hereditary, as his father died from a heart attack at age 45.
“You can have a healthy lifestyle, but I guess you still can’t run away from genetics,” he said.
Mitman said that after the surgery he had a fear of doing any kind of exercise, not knowing if it would be detrimental to his heart.
“I was hesitant to try any physical activity as I did not know how hard I could push myself,” he said.
He said that the first time he pulled up to the parking lot of The Zone, he would get fatigued to just walk from the parking lot to the workout area.
“After surgery your body is just torn down, you have no stamina at all,” he said.
Clarendon Health System’s Cardiac Rehab Services created a specialized program for him that would gradually increase his exercise level to bring his physical fitness level close to where it was before the incident.
In the program, Mitman exercises three times a week for a total of 36 sessions. Cardiac Rehab Services Director Betty Dukes said that typically each patient is set up on a machine for three minutes on four different exercise machines, until they are able to build up their cardiovascular levels up from 12 to 40 minutes.
Her team hooks each patient up to a wireless apparatus that transmits his or her EKG report and blood pressure to a computer screen that is monitored while the patient while he is exercising.
“We monitor their progress level as they go through the program and adjust their program as necessary,” said Dukes, a registered nurse. “Our goal is to get the patient to recover faster and have them feeling better, to increase their endurance level, and to prolong their life.”
The Cardiac Rehab Services team start the patients out gradually, on several machines, with no resistance, and then builds their resistance levels up. Cardiac Rehab Services includes Dukes, Lil Stukes, RN, Medical Technician Barbara Mathis and Exercise Physiologist Shelley Westbury.
Mitman said that the staff takes their time with each patient, to make sure that each person feels relaxed and is satisfied with what they do.
“They are very good about giving encouragement and helping people to get back to their health level,” Mitman said.
He said that while he will not be participating in any running events any time soon, he is at about 80-90 percent of where he was before his surgery.
Dukes said that having a heart-related incident is a life-changing experience and that some patients have a complete life turnaround.
“We’ve had patients that lived a very sedentary lifestyle and now are much more physically active,” she said.
For more information on Cardiac Rehab Services contact Dukes at 435-3733, or bdukes@clarendonhealth.com.
