Event benefits St. Luke’s heart health

Books & Boutiques, an annual luncheon event benefiting the St. Luke’s South Women’s Heart Health program, featured New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Berg and more than a dozen locally owned boutiques April 22 at the Overland Park Convention Center.

Kathy Howell, St. Luke’s South president and chief executive officer, said the program provides women access to cardiovascular care; education; rehabilitation; services including risk assessments such as lipid profile, blood sugar, thyroid function; and empowers women to be proactive.

Howell also announced that construction is nearly complete on two specialized centers for women’s health – the Ellen Hockaday Center for Women’s Care and the Muriel I. Kauffman Women’s Heart Center at St. Luke’s Hospital, 4323 Wornall Road, Kansas City, Mo. – as well as a new partnership with Johnson County Community College for the Women’s Heart Health Culinary Center.

Berg, who worked as a registered nurse for 10 years before becoming an author, talked about how nursing impacted her writing career.

“My mission is the same. I’m interested in healing and providing comfort,” Berg said. “Women, while taking care of everyone else, really must take care of themselves.”

Before deciding to become a nurse, Berg said she worked as a law firm receptionist, a “very bad” waitress, improv troupe actor, rock band singer and chicken washer in a hospital cafeteria.

Her hospital job led her to delivering lunches for patients, where she met a young man with cancer who later died.

“I wanted to know how to do something about it,” Berg said. “One day, between jobs, while lying in bed I heard someone in the apartment above me who was very sick. I had this desire to go see what they needed. I decided I wanted to be a nurse.”

Berg, the author of 18 books including an Oprah’s Book Club selection, “Open House,” said nursing school also was her “school of writing.”

“I learned about the nature of people,” she said. “They allow you access to their lives. They’re not playing games. You learn what really matters most in people’s lives. It had a profound impact on my writing; it gave me compassion and understanding.”

Berg spoke about her book “Talk Before Sleep,” the American Library Association’s Best Book of the Year for 1994, which is about a woman in the final stages of breast cancer.

Berg said she wrote the book after losing a good friend to breast cancer.

“I wanted to write about the power, salvation and strength of women’s friendships,” Berg said. “I wanted to remind people how important and essential women’s friendships are. I’m glad to know that’s emphasized here too.”

Berg, currently on tour promoting her latest novel, “The Last Time I Saw You,” said there are many forces in our lives that “act as consultations and inspirations. Sometimes we neglect being better at saying things we should say. As we learn life’s lessons, we demonstrate the importance of showing love in every way, every day.”

Books & Boutiques honorary chairwoman Gail Dicus, a heart transplant recipient, said St. Luke’s “means the world” to her.

“It gave me the gift of being born there a second time when I received my new heart,” she said.

Dicus suffered from viral myocardiopathy, a virus that attacks the heart’s lining.

After her transplant in 2005, Dicus said she “made a solemn vow that I would not forget this miracle. This heart came with a responsibility. I have to make sure that no other women have to go through this experience.”

The experience had positive moments for Dicus, including becoming a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign and speaking as an advocate for women’s heart health.

“I challenge all of you to make a heart plan, and I encourage you to get informed, know your numbers and get scanned, live a more balanced life,” Dicus said. “Choose a heart buddy to support each other in keeping your hearts safe.”

Dicus said her heart donor, Marcie, a critical care neonatal nurse, is always with her. She said her goal is to honor her donor every day.

“How can I live my life any other way?’ Dicus said. “Marcie and I won’t quit our quest to make all women heart healthy.”

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