Some thank-you notes take a while to write. This one took 22 years, and it connects a hospital in Boulder in 2004 with two colleagues at Denver Health today.
Denver Health shared the story on Oct. 7. In 2004, Mariah Bellinger was an emergency medical technician student rotating through the emergency department at Boulder Community Health’s hospital. On a slow day, cardiologist Matthew Holland, MD, brought her into the cardiac catheterization lab and taught her the warning signs of serious blockages.
A patient who sounded like her dad
When Holland described a patient in her 70s with chest pain and shortness of breath on exertion, Bellinger thought of her father. He was in his early 50s, an avid runner who had been feeling chest tightness on his runs. He had taken a stress test and was waiting about a month for a follow-up.
She told Holland, and Holland saw her father within two days. A catheterization revealed a 99% blockage in the left anterior descending artery, the artery tied to the heart attack often called the widow-maker. He received a stent.
Two decades later, the same hospital
Bellinger went on to become a doctor. She is now an emergency medicine physician at Denver Health’s Adult Urgent Care Center. Holland is the director of interventional cardiology at Denver Health. Recently, while consulting the cardiology team about a patient, she sent him a message to introduce herself and tell him how their paths had crossed in 2004.
Her father is 76 today. Denver Health says he is still skiing, boating and traveling, and keeping up with four grandchildren.
By the numbers
- 22: years between the catheterization and the thank-you
- 2: days it took for her father to be seen once she spoke up
- 99%: the blockage found in his artery
- 76: her father’s age now
The story is a reminder of two things: a few minutes of teaching can change a family’s life, and symptoms that show up during exercise are worth raising with a doctor instead of waiting out. Read Denver Health’s full account, including what both doctors said about it, at the link below.
More like this: Find the Good, Denver, The Denver auto body teacher who came back to lead his mentor’s program, Red Rocks Community College’s free monthly health clinic in Arvada, Learn: Health
