Post-Bulletin
by Matthew Stolle

Rene Cole has been waiting at Mayo Clinic Hospital- Saint Marys, for a heart transplant for 230 days. Her friend, Becca Imhoff, has been waiting for 446 days. At the mercy of events beyond their control, the two women savor the little moments of control and normalcy their lives offer. They know that a heart could come at any moment, but until it does, they wait and wait and wait. The period has stretched on for so long for Cole that she stopped making a daily tally of her stay. The approach of Thanksgiving gave the women an opportunity to take back some of that normalcy. At a recent support group session, the topic turned to plans people had for the holiday. When one patient said that he had no plans for Thanksgiving and would be spending it alone, “We were like, ‘No, you’re not,’” Cole said…And that’s how they came up with their idea of a Transplant Patients’ Hospital Thanksgiving.

Reach: The Rochester Post-Bulletin is a daily newspaper that serves Rochester, Austin and its surrounding cities. The newspaper has a daily circulation of more than 30,000 and has more than 440,00 unique visitors to its website each month.

Context: Mayo Clinic is the largest integrated transplant provider in the United States. Mayo Clinic's campuses in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota include more than 150 surgeons and physicians and hundreds of allied health staff who are trained in caring for transplant patients. Mayo Clinic's multidisciplinary team of experts is trained in many specialties, including cardiology, cardiac surgery, thoracic surgery, hepatology, nephrology, neurology, pulmonology, hematology, reconstructive surgery, endocrinology, pediatrics, physical medicine and rehabilitation, psychiatry, dermatology, urology and infectious diseases.

Contact: Heather Carlson

Tags: Rochester Post-Bulletin, Thanksgiving, transplants, Uncategorized