May 10, 2004
The taste of sweat is almost sweet to Peggy Kinney after her run. Cold wind lifts her hair and just feels good.
For Kinney, everything about running feels good. She delights in the sights and sounds of the early morning street; no headphones for this 46-year-old veteran of seven marathons. Like other distance runners in training, she wears a small heart rate monitor on her shoulder, but she’s got a different magic number from most.
“I have to keep it under 171—that’s when my defibrillator goes off,” Kinney says. “I also run with a cell phone, just in case.”
Kinney’s most vital piece of running gear is her internal cardiac defibrillator (ICD), a device implanted in her heart to correct an irregular rhythm. When necessary, the ICD delivers a shock to her heart strong enough to knock her off her feet—and to save her life.
Kinney was diagnosed with ventricular tachycardia more than three years ago while pregnant with her sixth child.
“I experienced a couple of fainting spells, so I went to my doctor, who said I was over 40 now and overdoing it, and should quit running,” Kinney says. “But I ran through my other pregnancies, and I knew my body well enough—something was wrong.”
Kinney was hospitalized and delivered her baby more than a month early. Six weeks later doctors discovered her serious heart problem. After surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, Kinney faced the cold certainty she would never run another marathon. Instead, she wrapped her mind around the challenge of recovery, its changing drug treatments and limited activity.
“The whole time I really just wanted to run again,” Kinney says. “I was still in the hospital and seeing how fast I could walk the lap around the floor. They couldn’t believe it—they said they’d just never had a patient who begged to exercise. They said I’d be lucky to even function normally again.”
Kinney had two goals: to be drug-free and to run again.
When Kinney received the green light to resume light exercise, the first sobering jolt from the ICD knocked her off the treadmill. Fear crept in.
“It’s emotionally very hurtful because I realized I was in a lethal rhythm, and if I hadn’t gotten the shock, it might have killed me,” Kinney says. “It scared me to death.”
She’s received a few more rough jolts—once while running on the road, and once while Christmas shopping in the mall.
“Talk about ‘shop ‘til you drop,’” she laughs, a little nervously. “I fell and dropped everything I was carrying.”
The long flights to the Mayo Clinic finally paid off when Kinney met Margaret Lloyd, M.D., the cardiologist who directed the mental toughness Kinney used in race training to conquer her new fears.
“She’s different; she’s real gutsy,” Kinney says. “She understood that because of my age, quality of life was very important. She really gave me a sense of ‘maybe we can do something with you.’ She inspired me.”
Kinney’s condition, considering her age and overall health, is rare, Lloyd says. Her passion for running had to be part of her recovery and new life.
“The first day I met Peggy, one of the first things she said was, ‘I’m a runner,’” Lloyd recalls. “It was part of her identity. She needed to continue doing it.”
Lloyd admits an ICD is both uncomfortable and frightening, but it allows Kinney to pursue her passion.
“If it wasn’t for the device, we’d have to ground her,” Lloyd said.
At first, Kinney wrestled with her inability to run competitively. She locked her trophies and ribbons away. Watching her sixth grade daughter compete on the track team was too hard.
Her frustration boiled over early in 2003 when Kinney watched a Providence Heart Institute commercial touting the benefits of exercise and a healthy lifestyle that could save people from heart disease.
“I was so angry—it wasn’t fair,” Kinney says. “So I called the hospital and told them that I was one of the healthiest people around, and heart disease does happen to healthy people.
After venting her frustration, Kinney received a new shock. Jeanna Moffett, marketing manager for Providence, asked Kinney if she was still running.
“I found out that Jeanna was a runner, too, and the race director for Providence’s Heart & Sole Women’s Five Miler. She told me she’d love to have me come to the race in May, even if I could only walk. Right away I said, ‘no, I’m not a walker, I’m a runner.’”
Moffett, a marathoner herself, said she immediately understood Kinney’s frustration, but thought this particular race could be healing for Kinney.
“The event is unique, all female, and very supportive, suitable even for women who have never run an event before,” Moffett says. “I wanted her to come and have a good experience, even if she could only walk it.”
Kinney decided to train for the race, her first since the ICD surgery three years before. On May 17, 2003, Peggy crossed the finish line in 50:38—just ahead of her daughter, Molly, and well ahead of her goal to finish under an hour. At the end, Kinney walked down a hill to burn off the emotion.
“I had that whole feeling of excitement and accomplishment, just like when I ran the Boston Marathon. It was so exciting to feel like myself again. My son told me at the finish line that I was still the best runner in the family.”
The road hasn’t been smooth for Kinney since the race. In August, she traveled to the Mayo Clinic for a replacement ICD when the battery on the first device failed. Two more surgeries followed in September and November to correct other problems.
“I’ve had to accept the challenges, the restrictions and the limitations, yet I have doctors willing to help me push it to the limit, and take it as far as I can take it,” Kinney says. “Dr. Lloyd has been so good at saying, ‘what’s the worse thing that could happen? You get a shock—so what. You fall down, you get up.’ That’s the kind of talk I need.”
And that’s the kind of talk that puts Kinney on the road, training to beat her own time at the Providence Heart & Sole Women’s Five Miler, May 14, 2004. For more information, call (803) 256-5938.