Clinician and Patient Joins The Way To My Heart's Board of Directors

San Rafael, CA - The Way To My Heart, a 501(c)(3), the world's largest support network for Peripheral Artery Disease (P.A.D.) patients, announces the addition of Nurse Practitioner and P.A.D. patient Kay Smith to its Board of Directors. Nurse Practitioner Kay has more than 40 years experience serving the vascular communities in both Scotland and England, with extensive experience as a tissue viability nurse, board certified in wound care. She has spent countless hours providing comprehensive education, high-touch advocacy, and real-time support for The Way To My Heart's network of more than 11,000 patients with P.A.D., plaque build-up in mainly the leg arteries that restricts blood flow and with that, oxygen, to muscles, tissues, and nerves in the lower extremities.

"I would be dead if it weren't for The Way To My Heart, so, I am honored to be on the Board of Directors for this organization that saved my life," explains Nurse Practitioner Kay. "I wanted to pay it forward and I will continue to pay it forward with my unique perspective both as a clinician and as a P.A.D. patient."

Nurse Practitioner Kay discovered The Way To My Heart through her own struggles with P.A.D.

"Doctors had marked me palliative because one vascular specialist decided during an angiogram that he shouldn't even attempt to unblock my aorta and iliac arteries because there was too much calcium, and he closed me up, leaving me to go home and die," says Smith, "But then I found Kym McNicholas, founder of the Way To My Heart, and she gave me hope again."

When Kay approached The Way To My Heart, she was in a wheelchair where she'd sat for three years awaiting answers, 19 months of which were in Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI), the most advanced stage of P.A.D. The Way To My Heart paired her with head of wellness Coach Susan Davis to align her mindset with healing, armed her with critical education and questions to support her search in finding an advanced limb specialist, and enrolled her in a remote walking program that included community peer support. Through the walking program, which included the use of a Virtual Reality Headset, Nurse Practitioner Kay's steps increased from fewer than 25 per day to more than 1,000 per day. When she found an advanced skilled vascular specialist willing to attempt revascularization, he told her that the only thing keeping her legs alive were the collateral vessels she developed taking additional steps through The Way To My Heart's "My Steps" program.

Kay still needed to be revascularized because the flow wasn't enough to relieve her rest pain.

Due to COVID restrictions and backlogs of procedures, it would be months before the doctor could perform a limb-saving angiogram. While awaiting her angiogram date, she revealed her clinical skillset and her breadth and depth of knowledge and experience and started helping The Way To My Heart's wellness team, spending almost every waking hour, despite debilitating pain, selflessly volunteering her time to support P.A.D. patients around the world.

Nurse Practitioner Kay offers extensive support to patients who are referred through The Way To My Heart's Leg Saver Hotline, its website, and via clinics around the world. She spends countless hours answering hundreds of inquiries daily online through social networks. While other online patient support groups led by patients offer biased support and medical advice based on only their limited experience with P.A.D. and select affiliations, Kay, as a P.A.D. patient AND clinician, with extensive cardiovascular experience that has put her alongside physicians pioneering new techniques and using new innovative tools in the endovascular suite to save life and limb throughout her career, is leading discussions in The Way To My Heart's extensive P.A.D. support network.

The stories of patients around the world that she's helped through The Way To My Heart's network in many ways are endless. Here are a few of the hundreds of stories:

• A patient in Indiana, who was on deck for a transmetatarsal amputation due to pseudomonas - Nurse Practitioner Kay educated the patient on an older approach known as Maggot Therapy. She helped the patient find a doctor who would prescribe them, found a reliable source to purchase what she endearingly called, "Wee Wigglies," and hired a freelance nurse to apply and remove them days later. This saved the patient's toe from amputation. On the same patient, Nurse Practitioner Kay used her extensive clinical connections to get fish skin donated to heal wounds on the patients other foot.

• A patient in Australia, who was a heavy smoker, overweight, lifestyle limiting claudication, and severe mental health problems - Nurse Practitioner Kay connected him with a counselor, successfully got him to quit smoking and lose weight through The Way To My Heart's smoking cessation and "Better Food Choices" diet program, and found him an advanced endovascular specialist who saved his leg from amputation.
• A patient in South Africa, who had lost one limb already and on deck for the other leg - Nurse Practitioner Kay was able to find him a limb saving endovascular specialist who was able to successfully revascularize the patient's arteries, clear to the toes.
• A patient marked palliative in Scotland, deemed inoperable by her surgeons - Nurse Practitioner Kay was able to use her experience and get her to the same doctor who saved her leg for a limb salvage procedure.
• A patient in England was struggling with getting her primary care physician to take her leg symptoms seriously - Nurse Practitioner Kay was not as concerned about the patient's legs as she was with her heart. During their call, the patient was grieving over the death of her mom just days before from an undiagnosed rare heart condition. In learning this, when Nurse Practitioner Kay contacted a specialist in The Way To My Heart's Network to get the patient in soonest for a leg artery ultrasound, she tipped him off about the mom. So, the doctor not only checked her legs but also her heart. He determined, while she didn't have P.A.D., she, too, would suffer the same fate as her mom and sister without immediate treatment.
• A patient in Texas, who video called Nurse Practitioner Kay after pulling over to the side of the road due to chest pain and related symptoms - Nurse Practitioner Kay quickly assessed patient, noticing he was cyanosed and breathless. She told him to stay where he, take nitroglycerine he had with him at all times, and managed to get the founder of The Way To My Heart to use geo location to get an ambulance to him within minutes. At the emergency room, the cardiologist told the patient his vitals were now fine and was filling out discharge papers when Nurse Practitioner intervened and kindly educated the doctor that once the nitro wore off, he was going to crash. That's what happened. If the patient had left the hospital, he would've been dead. Instead, the patient was offered further testing, was fitted with a life vest until a future appointment where a defibrillator/pacemaker was placed.
• At 7pm ET on a Friday night, 3am GMT, the daughter of a patient in Florida, found The Way To My Heart when her mom, who was on deck for a below-the-knee amputation the next Tuesday for non-healing ulcers on a few toes, was in increased pain and her wounds seemed to suddenly appear remarkably worse. Nurse Practitioner Kay, who was awake for other reasons, fielded the cry for help and was able to facilitate with The Way To My Heart's founder, a connection with an on-call limb salvage specialist two hours away who was ready to revascularize her arteries first thing Saturday morning. While the patient lost a couple of toes, her leg was preserved.

One of Nurse Practitioner Kay's favorite stories to tell is of DonDonn in the Philippines. He was on deck for a below-the-knee amputation for gangrene on two toes. He was using household bleach as cleanser without the finances to purchase proper wound care supplies. Kay determined DonDonn was suffering from Buergers Disease and just needed to stop smoking, get access to appropriate wound care supplies, and have real-time wound care support. She worked with DonDonn on smoking cessation, purchased and sent wound care supplies to him, and every day for three months she was on video chat coaching him on proper wound care. DonDonn only had one toe auto-amputate. He now walks his newborn baby girl daily and has christened Nurse Practitioner Kay as the God Mother to show his family's appreciation for saving his leg and giving him his life back.

"Nurse Practitioner Kay is one-of-a-kind," says The Way To My Heart founder Kym McNicholas. "Her selfless devotion and commitment to saving life and limb, especially the lengths she goes for each and every patient, is unmatched. To have someone as special as Nurse Practitioner Kay as a true partner in care supporting thousands of patients around the globe, is priceless."

How many P.A.D. patient advocates do you know of who have extensive experience both as a clinician and patient, who not only fought for her life and limb in CLI for nearly two years, but also persevered?

Check out Nurse Practitioner Kay dancing with her husband for the first time in five years, one month after her limb saving revascularization by The Way To My Heart's Global Vascular Doctor of the Year, Mr. Alex Vesey.

Nurse Practitioner Kay is an asset to The Way To My Heart and her fellow P.A.D. Warriors, as they like to call one another. She not only brings great value to patients with direct support and advocacy as a clinician and peer who can relate to them on so many levels, but also to The Way To My Heart's leadership team, helping to drive its unique, comprehensive, educational, advocacy, and support programs forward from a clinical perspective as well as that of a patient.

Join Nurse Practitioner Kay and The Way To My Heart in continuing to fight for life & limb! More impactful Board appointments will soon follow. For more information go to www.thewaytomyheart.org.

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