For Robin Wadsworth, Sept. 3, 2024, started as a normal day. A unit secretary at UAB St. Vincent’s Birmingham, she spent her shift communicating with patients, helping nurses with paperwork, and making sure things ran smoothly on the seventh floor.
After nearly 20 years at the hospital, there wasn’t much that could surprise her. But that changed when she had a heart attack and dropped to the ground on the way to her car after work.
“I worked until 11 p.m., and when I left, I went to the parking deck by myself,” Wadsworth said. “I think it happened as I was coming off the elevator. When I fell, my Apple Watch sent a hard fall alert to my sister, who woke my husband up, and they called my floor to find out where I was because I wasn’t answering my phone.”
Help arrives
As some of the unit nurses were looking for her, another hospital employee happened to see Wadsworth lying on the floor of the parking deck. He rushed to a nearby security call button, and help was sent from the emergency room.
“At that point I didn’t have a pulse, and they didn’t know how long I’d been down,” Wadsworth said. “There was also some blood there from where it looked like I hit my head. They started chest compressions on the way to the emergency room, where they had to zap me once to get my heartbeat going.”
She was moved to a cardiology area after being stabilized, and doctors discovered that she had two blocked arteries, so they inserted a small tube called a stent to help restore blood flow. Then she was transferred to the hospital’s 1 South ICU, where she was put on a ventilator and given medication.
About a month after her heart attack, Wadsworth went to UAB Spain Rehabilitation Center to continue her recovery and literally get back on her feet.
“I couldn’t walk, so I had to do different leg exercises to build my muscles back up,” she said. “They had a simulator for a car that I had to get in and out of, because I couldn’t leave unless I was able to get in a vehicle. We also spent a lot of time working on walking up stairs. I remember one of the therapists telling me, ‘You’re not going to be able to go home until you can do this,’ and I remember telling her, ‘I’m going home.’”
Long road ahead
After three weeks of determined effort, Wadsworth went home for the first time since her heart attack. But she knew she still had a long road ahead. “I had to go to physical therapy and occupational therapy to work on my brain, because I wasn’t remembering a lot of things, and I had to learn to write again,” she said.
As part of that therapy, Wadsworth’s daughter took her to UAB St. Vincent’s St. Clair three times a week, where she exercised her body and mind as they worked to restore her abilities. She faced other setbacks during her recovery, including a broken ankle and a broken knee, but she never wavered from her goal of returning to work.
“That’s all I talked about,” Wadsworth said. “My husband and daughter were trying to convince me to retire early – they were dead set against me going back – but I said no, I wanted to go back.”
Toasting her return
Indeed, she finally did return to work, a full year after her heart attack.
“When I got out of the elevator and walked up to the front desk, everyone was standing there with balloons and sparkling apple cider in champagne glasses,” Wadsworth said. “They were all toasting me and hugging on me, and when they announced on the hospital’s overhead intercom that I had come back, it just about made me cry. Tons of people came up to welcome me back after that.”
Despite the hurdles she faced, Wadsworth says she’s grateful to be serving patients again. “I think of myself being in their situation and know that when a patient calls, I want to give them the same kind of care and attention that I received,” she said.