Sometimes, how we healthcare is what happens when a life of leadership finally makes room for rest, and the heart insists on being heard.
Janet Durden spent 40 years lifting other people up.
As president of the United Way of Northeast Louisiana, she worked long hours and rarely slowed down. She poured herself into her community, meeting by meeting, one conversation at a time, wherever she was needed. When she finally retired, she got the send-off she deserved. A lovely party. Warm words. A future full of plans.
“It was a great career,” she says. “I loved what I did then, and I love that I’m not doing it now.”
Then, barely a week later, her body changed the plan.
When the Heart Speaks Up
Janet had lived with AFib for years, managing it carefully under a doctor’s care. It never slowed her down. But days into retirement, everything shifted. Her heart raced into severe episodes. She landed in the FMOL Health | St. Francis emergency room, not once, but twice.
For a woman used to running on purpose and adrenaline, the fatigue was its own kind of shock. Heavy medication left her drained. She found herself choosing between unloading the dishwasher or doing a load of laundry, because she might not have the energy for both.
“Here was this person who could go and do whatever I wanted,” she says. “And suddenly I had to rest.”
Through it all, she leaned on two things. “I trusted the Lord was taking care of me, and I trusted my healthcare team,” she says.
A Team That Showed Up
Janet stayed four days on the heart floor at St. Francis Medical Center. What struck her most was the attentiveness, the steady sense that someone was always watching over her.
She had long known St. Francis as an important part of the Northeast Louisiana community. But experiencing their care as a patient gave that knowledge a new and personal weight.
“The care and the concern were really unbelievable,” she says. “I met every doctor and nurse along the way. Someone was always there to update me, introduce themselves and tell me what they were doing next.”
For Janet, that consistency mattered. She never felt like the next patient on a list. She felt like someone who was genuinely cared for.
An Intense Procedure, a Team She Trusted
The next step was a TAVR, a transcatheter aortic valve replacement. It’s a significant procedure, one that carries a person’s heart on machinery while surgeons place a new valve and reconnect everything. Yet the team at St. Francis has it down to a science.
They did a great deal before. A great deal after. And still, Janet went in and went home the next day, with just one night in the hospital.
Recovery in the cardiovascular recovery unit was intense, and she’d been in hospitals enough times to know the difference. This was something else.
“I was amazed at the level of attentiveness they gave me,” she says. The teams led by Greg Sampognaro, MD, and Sarah Ahmad, MD, were, in her words, experts at what they do. “I was very confident in their care.”
She came through it feeling grateful, and a little humbled. After a lifetime of caring for others, Janet was the one being cared for.
The Turning Point: Cardiac Rehab
At first, Janet didn’t want to go to cardiac rehab. The idea seemed unnecessary to her. But her care team insisted, and she’s glad they did.
She arrived at St. Francis Cardiac Rehabilitation barely able to walk from the parking lot to the second floor. That’s how weak she’d become.
What she found there changed everything.
The team met her with high expectations and warm hearts. They hooked her up to monitors, watched every step and pushed her toward her best, all while making sure she never felt at risk. Donna Blackett, RN, leads a team Janet describes as humble and low-key but firm and powerful.
“Because they’re cardiac rehab nurses, I never felt at risk no matter how much they pushed me,” she says.
They also refused to let her off the hook. When Janet graduated, they made sure she committed to a follow up exercise program before she left by asking her, “What time is your appointment to visit your new workout place?”
Little by little, Janet regained her stamina. She watched the team care for every kind of person, from a former CEO to a sweet grandmother for whom exercise was the most foreign thing in the world. And she watched them bring out the best in each one.
Prioritizing Fitness and Health
Janet has a name for who she is now. A convert to fitness and exercise!
Today, she protects exercise the way she once protected the most important meetings on her calendar. Their expectations were 50 minutes of aerobic activity, three times a week. So, she has an exercise class two days a week and a trainer two days a week.
When travel gets in the way, she still refuses to miss her training. “I realize how much better my life is with that kind of regular exercise,” she says.
She’s become something of an evangelist about it, too.
“We all think we’re too busy to take care of ourselves,” she says. “That was an ‘aha’ moment.”
Her heart valve, she’s quick to point out, would have needed replacing whether she exercised or not. But her blood pressure is a different story. For that, movement isn’t optional. It’s essential.
Learning to Slow Down
Ask Janet what the hardest part was, and her answer is honest.
It wasn’t the procedure. It wasn’t fear. “You don’t die from AFib,” she says plainly.
The hardest part was slowing down.
“I didn’t like it. It wasn’t me,” she says. “It was a real quick lesson in acceptance.”
She looked healthy. But some days it was all her husband could do to walk her into church. So she rested. She kept it private, telling only her closest circle. And in the quiet, she felt something settle.
“In a strange way, I heard the Lord say, ‘You’re going to have to slow down,’” she says.
So she did. She began building a slower, fuller kind of life, one rooted less in doing and more in being.
Along the way, she found a deeper appreciation for good health, and a new sense of responsibility for it.
“I always felt like I was using my God-given gifts for His purpose through my work,” she says. “But He also gives us good health. We have the same responsibility to take care of that. And I had ignored it.”
A New Purpose
Janet spent four decades making a difference for others. Now she understands a truth she once overlooked.
“If you don’t have the stamina to do it, you’re not good to the people you’re trying to help,” Janet says.
That’s her message now, offered to anyone who will listen. Take care of your health. Value the strength it takes to keep going. And don’t wait for your heart to demand your attention before you give it any.
Her story connects, she believes, precisely because it’s so ordinary. AFib is common. A valve replacement is common. And that’s exactly why it matters.
“It reminds people they need to check in on their heart,” she says.
Don’t Wait for a Warning
Janet’s heart spoke up just as she was ready to start a new chapter. Thankfully, a skilled and caring team at St. Francis was ready to answer.
Janet found her second purpose in the slowing down. And she’s living it, one steady, grateful day at a time.
