February 15, 2025
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Geneva’s Delnor Hospital volunteer takes heart on Valentine’s Day

Northwestern Medicine’s Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute celebrating 20 years

By Brenda Schory
After having a heart valve replaced in a clinical trial, Barbara Schneider, 87, returned to volunteering at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva. She went on to participate in three granddaughters' weddings in 2023, the last in Geneva. From left, Schneider, Rich and Kristin Balsitis, Gabrielle and Matthew Sowinski.

After having a heart valve replaced in a clinical trial, Barbara Schneider, 87, returned to volunteering at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva. She went on to participate in three granddaughters' weddings in 2023, the last in Geneva. From left, Schneider, Rich and Kristin Balsitis, Gabrielle and Matthew Sowinski. (Provided by Kristin Balsitis )

For human beings, the heart is often described as the center of all things.

We say the heart of the matter, cross your heart, bleeding heart, change of heart, heartfelt, sweetheart, heartbroken - the list goes on.

And February, the home of Valentine’s Day, is recognized as American Heart Month, promoting an awareness of heart disease as the leading cause of death in the U.S.

For Barbara Schneider, a 14-year-volunteer at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva, the heart was not an idiom but a serious medical issue.

After two open heart surgeries to replace her mitral valve in 2008 and 2018, the tricuspid valve on the other side of her heart began to fail in 2021.

“I had a lot of fatigue and shortness of breath,” Schneider said.

The condition is called tricuspid regurgitation, a type of heart valve disease which causes blood flow to leak in the wrong direction.

Dr. Nauman Mushtaq , a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva. Dr. Mushtaq is medical director of cardiology for Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute in the western suburbs.

Dr. Nauman Mushtaq , a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva. Dr. Mushtaq is medical director of cardiology for Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute in the western suburbs. (Meghan McCloud)

“It’s not unusual in her situation,” her cardiologist Dr. Nauman Mushtaq at Delnor said. “Surgery for this at her age – surgeons wouldn’t have done it. It was too prohibitive because of risk. The medications we tried – it just wasn’t working for her.”

Then you could say Schneider and her doctor had a heart-to-heart.

Mushtaq, medical director of cardiology for Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute in the western suburbs, told her about the TRISCEND clinical trial to test whether they could replace the leaky valve without surgery.

Without skipping a heart beat, she agreed.

“She would have been out of options,” Mushtaq said.

Schneider’s valve was replaced on Jan. 24, 2022, at Northwestern Medicine’s Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute in Chicago.

“I had the procedure on Monday and I went home on Wednesday,” Schneider, 87, said. “Instead of opening your heart – cracking open your chest – they used a transcatheter to go up (through) the groin to the heart and replace that valve. The other two (surgeries) I was in the hospital 10 days each time.”

Transcatheter refers to a medical procedure where a catheter a thin, flexible tube is inserted into a blood vessel and guided to a specific location in the body.

The clinical trial Schneider participated in led to FDA approval of the new valve in 2024.

Soon, Schneider was back volunteering at Delnor, where she brings books and magazines to the patients.

“I love volunteering,” Schneider said. “Some people call me ‘The Book Lady.’”

Having that leaky valve replaced was life-changing for her, Schneider’s daughter Kristin Balsitis of St. Charles said.

“She seems younger now at 87 than she did a decade ago,” Balsitis said. “It’s just amazing and it’s so wonderful because of who she is. She is very energetic and very enthusiastic about life and never wanted to stop or slow down at all...It really changed her life for the better.”

And in 2023, Schneider participated in three granddaughters' weddings: In Virginia in August; in Chicago in October – where she also officiated – and in December at the now-closed Copper Fox in Geneva, where she was a flower-grandma.

“It meant the world to me,” said her granddaughter Gail Sowinski, of Batavia.

“It was the happiest day of my life for so many reasons,” Sowinski said. “But having my grandma there, was something I can’t ever describe how happy that made me. It’s just that she is an incredible woman and I’m so grateful she’s a part of my life.”

And on this Valentine’s Day, Northwestern Medicine will mark the 20th anniversary of its Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, which began – without a bit of irony – on Feb. 14, 2005.

With hundreds of thousands of patients treated and countless lives saved over the last two decades, the hospital staff and patients – including Schneider – will celebrate Institute’s anniversary at a special gathering Friday at Northwestern Medicine’s Chicago location.

The Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute is now ranked among the top 10 heart programs in the nation, among the top 15 hospitals in the nation for heart attack survival and among the top 20 cardiac surgery centers in the world, according to a news release from the hospital.

And that’s at the heart of it.

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