An interview with Nancy Evers

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A birthday present from her husband fifteen years ago saved Nancy Evers: a preventive health examination. For two years, she had been experiencing pain in her chest and shoulders and suffered from chronic fatigue. However, there was nothing wrong, a doctor assured her after a blood test. “Take some paracetamol”, was the advice, “it’s all in your head.”

Until the day of the examination: within half a minute the doctor had seen what was wrong. The ultrasound showed a dilation of the aorta over a length of six centimetres; she was a walking time bomb. “The next day I went to my GP with all the information and he referred me to a cardiologist.

A few weeks later I had to undergo open heart surgery.”

You live in a daze, she says, describing how she “became a heart patient from one day to the next.” In addition to the dilation of the aorta, it turned out that she also had a severely calcified aortic valve, which was replaced with a mechanical one, and she was given a pacemaker.

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Life motto

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That was not the only thing she encountered. After her rehabilitation, she returned to work at the bank, but she says she faced a lot of opposition.  It was the middle of the banking crisis with all the merger problems that entailed. She finally left in 2014. “I literally thought my life was over, but I found the strength to carry on.”

From that moment on, Nancy’s life motto was to continue in your own strength. And that served her well. “Many people think that as a heart patient you are no longer able to do anything. Nonsense of course! Not everything is possible anymore, but you can also look at it positively: what are you still able to do?”

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Half marathon

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Nancy put her money where her mouth was and took up running. A five-kilometre race became a ten-kilometre race, followed by the Dam to Dam Run. Hand in hand with her husband, she crossed the finish line, and that was a magical moment. She is also proud of her performance in the Amsterdam half marathon. All her medals are on display in the living room. “Not to pat myself on the back, but as a good memory and as an anchor.”

For years now, she has been involved as a volunteer with the Dutch Heart Foundation. She also prepares women for open heart surgery and then helps them pick up the pieces of their lives again. Wonderful work, she says, because how nice is it to be able to give people a helping hand in this way?

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Sinterklaas

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Sailing has always been a passion of Nancy and her husband. Not so strange if you live in Hoorn, right on the Markermeer. But a few years ago she suffered a new setback: she developed arthritis in her hands. “I dropped everything”, she says, “and my occupational therapist saw that the strength in my hands had decreased enormously. When the inflammation had subsided, she sent me to Manometric. I had never heard of them and had no idea what to expect. At the appointment, I put my hand in a futuristic-looking scanner, very special. Another very positive thing was that I really did not feel like a patient there. Two weeks later they were ready. It was quite an exciting moment and it was like Christmas morning. The braces in

beautiful boxes!

I put them on and thought: this can’t be true, so much comfort and support. You regain the confidence that you can pick up where you left off and that makes life so much easier. Look, I can’t lift fifteen or twenty kilos with my hands, but I can lead a normal life. And how much is that worth? How wonderful is it that you don’t have to take pills but can be helped with a brace? So there you have it: Nancy version 2.0.”

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Mano Air

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A small disappointment was that she turned out to be allergic to silicone, a basic material for the brace: after wearing it for a long time, the edges of the brace became red and painful. It is very rare, but Nancy turned out to be the exception to the rule. Manometric has now developed a new model: the Mano Air, which is made of a different plastic and provides support where needed, like a kind of brace. She now has one. And just like the silicone brace, it does exactly what it is supposed to do. “In a few weeks, I will get one for my other hand. I can hardly wait.”

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