Montgomery labor and delivery nurse given new lease on life following heart transplant

After overcoming battles with breast cancer and heart failure, labor and delivery nurse Nancy Polizzi is grateful for being given new life so that she can continue to bring new life into the world.

“It gave me a whole new outlook on life,” said the 61-year-old Montgomery resident, who works at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield. “Just bringing new life into the world each day is amazing. You get to spend time with a couple during their most amazing time of their life. And most of the time, you get to experience the birth as well and be there as support for them. For me, it’s the perfect nursing job.”

Several years after being treated for breast cancer in 2009, she began experiencing shortness of breath. Her left ventricle was damaged, possibly from chemotherapy, and she was suffering early congestive heart failure.

More than five million Americans are living with heart failure – the inability of the heart to provide adequate blood supply and oxygen to the rest of the body. February is American Heart Month, which encourages people to focus on their cardiovascular health.

“The heart was not pumping like it should,” Polizzi said. “And that’s typical for congestive heart failure.”

She was then put on medications, which helped for a time.

“It got to a point where the medications were no longer working,” Polizzi said.

Doctors told her they needed a heart transplant, which left her in shock.

“Even after everything I’ve went through with breast cancer, I was kind of in denial that I needed it.”

—  Nancy Polizzi, nurse at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital Winfield

“That was very difficult for me to hear,” Polizzi said. “Even after everything I’ve went through with breast cancer, I was kind of in denial that I needed it. I was working my 12-hour shifts three days a week. I was like, ‘I’m fine. I’m still working. People that get heart transplants are much sicker than what I have right now.’ But they kept saying that I was kind of in denial and just pushing through it.”

Her heart then failed and she received a left ventricular assist device, also known as a LVAD. The LVAD is a surgically implanted mechanical heart pump that assists the heart to pump blood throughout the body.

“It kind of keeps it pumping to the right strength,” Polizzi said. “People live on this. If you’re not well enough to get a heart transplant, they will give you this and this would be what you might live the rest of your life on. But because I was younger, I, at that point, was able to use this to get better and to get to a healthier stance so that once I did get a heart transplant, that this would go smoother. I was way too sick at that point to get a transplant.”

Polizzi said her health improved because of the device.

“It did bring up my whole body to a healthier place so once I did get my heart transplant, the recovery was minimal,” she said. “It was in a sense a gift to get that type of a thing.”

Polizzzi was on the LVAD for a year and two months before she received a heart transplant. She was put on a 30-day waiting list for a new heart.

To her surprise, she received a call three days after being put on the list that a heart was ready. But because her children all tested positive for COVID-19, Polizzi had to drive herself to the hospital for the procedure.

And she did so after just working a 12-hour shift.

“I just walked into the hospital with my backpack on my back,” Polizzi said. “Where there is a will, there’s a way. You just do it.”

Her doctor, Anjan Tibrewala, heart failure and heart transplantation specialist at the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, is happy with how Polizzi is doing these days.

“These are the kind of outcomes we actually expect,” he said. “It’s a way to give people their life back. She’s back at work and she’s going on trips with her family and day to day, she’s feeling a lot better.”

It’s been two years since she received her heart transplant. Polizzi hopes her story can help others facing similar challenges.

“If that was what my journey was about, to encourage somebody else, then that’s what I want to do,” she said. “I’ve been blessed to get through it and now I want to help in any way I can for anyone else.”