PORT ANGELES — After dying three times, she finally had a change of heart.
“My heart loves me and I love my heart,” said Robin (Tweter) Presnelli, who will describe her experience as a heart transplant recipient at the 19th annual Red, Set Go heart health luncheon.
“My heart has just fit right in,” she added, saying she has not experienced symptoms of rejection. “It feels good to feel good.”
The Olympic Medical Center Foundation luncheon will begin at 11:30 a.m. Feb. 27 at the Vern Burton Community Center, 308 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles.
Tickets are $100 per person or $800 per table of eight. Proceeds will support the OMC Heart Center.
For tickets and more information about the Red, Set Go luncheon, see www.omhf.org, call 360-417-7144, or go to the OMC Foundation office at 1015 Georgiana St., Port Angeles.
This will be the third time Presnelli will speak at Red, Set Go, although, for the first two times, she was known as Robin Tweter, a local businesswomen, a fixture at Togas before it was sold and later at Country Aire, and a Babe Ruth baseball volunteer.
In 2008, she was the now-annual heart health luncheon’s first spotlighted survivor after she was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, which can lead to heart failure. In 2019, she spoke again after a defibrillator implanted in her chest saved her life, the first time she died.
At the upcoming luncheon, she will talk about the heart transplant she had on June 8, 2024, at the University of Washington Medical Center, where she died twice and was revived before she gained a new heart.
“I’m in gratitude every day. Getting an organ is such a gift — and,” she added, “when they tell you to do certain things and take your medicines at certain times, don’t disrespect that.”
When she was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, Presnelli was raising two sons, running a business — Round Up A Latte on U.S. Highway 101 — managing Babe Ruth concession stands, traveling and leading a full life, until she had what she called an “episode” in 2019. Her defibrillator brought her back to life.
Before then, “No one ever knew I had heart failure,” she said. “These little pills I was given carried me through to 2024.”
She sold her business in 2015 and worked at Togas for years, followed by work at Country Aire and “never had I carried that heavy load of heart failure” until that day, fatigued and short of breath, she looked at the stairs at Country Aire and they looked eight miles long.
She checked herself into the emergency room and found that she was experiencing irregular heartbeats.
“My heart was done. My heart was tired,” Presnelli said. “It had carried me all those years, but when it was done, it was done.”
On May 18, she was shipped over to UW. After a battery of tests, she was approved for a transplant on June 4 and received her new heart on June 8.
She had great praise for her teams, from financial to transplant, who worked on her case.
“I had the best care and the best nurses. They love their job over there,” she said. “You have teams that come in. They take care of everything.”
When she was wheeled into surgery, all those working on her case lined up on either side to cheer her on.
“They wheel you down the hall. All the people who helped you are there with cards, some high-fiving,” said Presnelli, who added that she thanked all of them before the surgery for being on her team.
“I made friends with all of them. They are all there to walk you home.”
Presnelli said she was never in pain, not even after the transplant.
And she was never afraid, except in one circumstance.
When she was going through the tests prior to transplant surgery, she would wake up at night short of breath and the nurse would not see that anything was out of line.
“I’m thinking, am I going crazy?” she said.
“But I was never afraid of the process. They’re walking you home.”
Her transplant team told her she could be a poster child for heart disease. Everything else in her body was healthy.
“The only thing wrong is your heart,” she was told.
Her heart was genetically weak, she found, a surprise since no one in her family had had heart disease that she knew of. Both her sons will be tested.
Both sons were on hand, with her oldest — he’s empathetic to an extreme — taking time out of his life to care for her 24/7 for 3 1/2 months.
That’s something a transplant patient needs, Presnelli emphasized. Round-the-clock care is essential for between three and four months.
Presnelli also had great community support, she said. A gofundme page helped with expenses.
“I don’t know what I would have done without the community coming forward and helping the way they did,” she said.
“I was taken care of here (in Port Angeles) before I went over there (to UW),” Presnelli said.
“When I got diagnosed, I was able to be cared for at our heart center,” and didn’t have to go anywhere until 2024, she said.
“We have to continue to support our heart center.”
Since her surgery, she has dealt with a couple of viruses her heart gave her, something that is not unusual, she said. She also took time for herself.
“I gave myself nine months off. I’d never had time off,” Presnelli said. “I went down to the Spit and I stood there and looked across and I started bawling. I went there every day for nine months.”
Now she works a few hours at Country Aire and volunteers to help those going through what she did.
So far, she’s spoken with three people who are about to have transplants.
“I tell them, ‘You’re in good hands,’” Presnelli said. “Everything’s positive that they do over there. Sharing what I went through with all the positives eases their mind.
“That’s why I’m here. I’m here to help others through it.
“We are all here walking each other home.”
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Leah Leach is a former executive editor for Peninsula Daily News.
