{"id":126407,"date":"2024-01-08T22:15:03","date_gmt":"2024-01-09T03:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=126407"},"modified":"2024-01-08T22:15:03","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T03:15:03","slug":"not-the-kind-of-heart-throb-taylor-swift-sung-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=126407","title":{"rendered":"Not the Kind of Heart Throb Taylor Swift Sung About"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kim Krug was in all her glory last May during a Taylor Swift concert at Lincoln Financial Field.\u00a0Kim, from Pennsburg, swayed to the music and traded bracelets with fellow Swifties.<\/p>\n

While celebrating that highest of highs, she had no idea what the coming week would bring. Chest pains. Pins and needle feelings. A week after the concert, while at home, she knew something was wrong and drove to the St. Luke\u2019s Upper Bucks Campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had just awful chest pain, and it wasn\u2019t going away,\u201d said Kim, 51, a Global Director for Johnson & Johnson. \u201cAnd I couldn’t fall asleep. I was in so much pain. It was like hours and hours, and I couldn\u2019t take it anymore, so I drove myself to the ER.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her EKG was fairly normal, said cardiologist Marcus A. Averbach, MD, who examined Kim in the ER, \u201cbut her blood tests showed high levels of troponin, indicating she was having a heart attack. I told her I was really glad she came in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim experienced a non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction (non-STEMI) that happens when the heart\u2019s need for oxygen can\u2019t be met. Dr. Averbach had Kim transferred by ambulance to St. Luke\u2019s Anderson Campus, where an on-call team led by interventional cardiologist Luis A. Tejada, MD, performed an angioplasty and placed a stent to fix a 100 percent blockage in her left anterior descending artery (LAD), the so-called \u201cWidowmaker\u201d blockage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the most important artery,\u201d Dr. Tejada said. \u201cWe did the catheterization and it went very well and restored the blood flow with a very good result.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey saved my life,\u201d Kim said. \u201cI mean it. They really saved my life. The second part of the story is that because I waited so long to go in, I had a lot of heart damage, which left me with an ejection fraction of 35 percent, which is scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

A normal ejection fraction is 55-65%. Below 35% means your heart isn\u2019t pumping enough blood and may be failing.<\/p>\n

Kim went home with a LifeVest, a wearable defibrillator, and was referred to cardiac rehabilitation with Andrea Emery at St. Luke\u2019s Quakertown in Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation. There, she said she found the physical lifestyle and emotional support she called \u201cabsolutely extraordinary!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen she first came to me, she was very depressed and was feeling a lot of stress,\u201d Emery said. \u201cI told her cardiac rehab is where we can get rid of that LifeVest, and she looked at me like I had two heads and asked if that was true, and I said absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim fully committed to the rehab process. She changed her diet, quit smoking, and didn\u2019t just begin to exercise, but learned about cardiac risk factor modification. After \u201cgraduating\u201d from cardiac rehab with an ejection fraction of 45%, Kim continues to take spin classes to work her heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cI put into practice everything I learned in cardiac rehab,
\nKim said. \u201cIt\u2019s also about nutrition, with a clean diet, and I\u2019ve lost 60 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

That last session with Andrea was something sweet. And Swift.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always play music during rehab sessions, and she just loved Taylor Swift,\u201d Emery said. \u201cSo, for her last session, I created a whole Taylor Swift playlist, and she absolutely loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before that Taylor Swift concert in May, Kim thought she was living her best life, dancing away. Today, after a major scare and important, healthy lifestyle changes, she really is.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of this would have been possible without the extraordinary care from everyone at St. Luke\u2019s,\u201d Kim said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About St. Luke\u2019s<\/strong><\/p>\n

Founded in 1872,\u00a0St. Luke\u2019s University Health Network<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 20,000 employees providing services at 15 campuses and 300+ outpatient sites.\u00a0 With annual net revenue of $3.4 billion, the Network\u2019s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke\u2019s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke\u2019s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania.\u00a0 In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley\u2019s first and only four-year medical school campus.\u00a0 It also operates the nation\u2019s longest continuously operating School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 45 fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with more than 400 residents and fellows. In 2022, St. Luke\u2019s, a member of the Children\u2019s Hospital Association, opened the Lehigh Valley\u2019s first and only free-standing facility dedicated entirely to kids.<\/p>\n

SLUHN is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare\u2019s\u00a0five-star<\/em>\u00a0ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction.\u00a0 It is both a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades\u00a0Top Hospital<\/em>\u00a0and a Newsweek World\u2019s\u00a0Best Hospital<\/em>.\u00a0 The Network\u2019s flagship University Hospital has earned the\u00a0100 Top Major Teaching Hospital<\/em>\u00a0designation from Fortune\/Merative 11 times total and eight years in a row, including in 2023 when it was identified as THE #4 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY.\u00a0 In 2021, St. Luke\u2019s was identified as one of the\u00a015 Top Health Systems<\/em>\u00a0nationally.\u00a0 Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the\u00a0Most Wired<\/em>\u00a0award recognizing the breadth of the SLUHN\u2019s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information. \u00a0The Network is also recognized as one of the state\u2019s lowest cost providers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Information provided to TVL by:
\nSam Kennedy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kim Krug was in all her glory last May during a Taylor Swift concert at Lincoln Financial Field.\u00a0Kim, from Pennsburg, swayed to the music and traded bracelets with fellow Swifties. … Continue reading Not the Kind of Heart Throb Taylor Swift Sung About<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-valley"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/sluhn-medical-advice.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/126321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}