Running on a New Heart

It’s been 24 years since Leslie Ramusack was given a new chance at life, and she has taken that opportunity and ran with it.

For the first half of Leslie’s life, she never experienced any real health problems, exemplified by the fact that as a kid she never missed a day of school.

When Everything Changed

But that all changed when she was 26 and started experiencing chest pains. Her mom, a nurse, suggested she see a doctor, and Leslie received a diagnosis that would begin a series of life-changing events.

“I went to my doctor, and he got a chest x-ray,” Leslie recalls. “He said that my heart was enlarged, which is odd for (someone my age). The cardiologist I saw after this was also concerned. From there more tests were run and they decided that it definitely was the structure of my heart.”

A Fight for Survival

For the next several years, Leslie’s condition was managed with medication, but on New Year’s Day of 2001, she was walking and felt like all of the air was being sucked from her lungs. For the next several weeks, even simple things like walking and sleeping were difficult.

At the end of February, she was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and underwent an electrophysiology exam, which evaluates the electrical activity of the heart. Leslie coded in the middle of the test and had to be revived, and it was then doctors decided she needed a heart transplant.

Leslie was kept in the hospital until a new heart was found. There was a “lot of testing and waiting around”, but Leslie credits her family, friends, and church community for helping her get through the time and taking care of everything that needed to be done during her stay.

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The Call That Changed Everything

Finally, on April 1, the call came.

“My friends Rachell & Missy were visiting from Cleveland that weekend, and that morning Missy & I were walking the halls,” Leslie said. “My cardiologist was walking in the opposite direction and met me and told me I had to go back to my room. At that point, she told me that they had a heart for me. I calmly said ‘cool… let’s go!’”

Leslie was wheeled into surgery later that afternoon, and after five hours, the heart of a 21-year-old college student named Keith was beating inside of her chest.

Choosing to Live Fully

One of the first things Leslie did after her transplant was to book a trip to Ireland. Before her surgery, she had always worried she’d never live long enough to go to Europe. Travel became something Leslie enjoyed doing.

“I realized the time is now,” she said.

But it wasn’t time to start running – yet. Life went on, in 2009 Leslie became a nurse and moved to Indianapolis, and it was there in late 2013 that it all got started.

“My friend Rachel was coming in from St Louis to run the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. I came down to watch the end of the race and was weirdly moved by these strangers running,” Leslie recalls. “Rachel is extremely evangelical about running. It’s her passion, and at the end of the day she said ‘mark my words… next year you will be running the 5K here while I try for Boston’.”

Adding more motivation was a checkup in the spring of 2014. Leslie had been experiencing some shortness of breath and was concerned that maybe her heart was failing.

A Promise to Herself

Her cardiologist asked Leslie if she was doing any sort of exercise, and like many of us, she came up with several excuses as to why she wasn’t. The doctor made Leslie promise that if everything was OK with her heart that she would begin exercising.

Once she was cleared, Leslie stuck to her promise, bought some shoes and gear, and began a Couch to 5K program. She ran her first race in June and on a cold and rainy morning finished her first race at the back of the pack.

But she felt like a runner, and wanted to continue. As the summer went on, Leslie began to think even bigger.

What about a half marathon? With the help of her “fast friend” Rachel, Leslie put together a plan that led to her completing the Indianapolis Monumental Half marathon in November.

From 5K to 40 Half Marathons

The floodgates opened. Since then, Leslie has completed three marathons and after running the Indy Mini Marathon in early May, has now run 40 half marathons with the goal of completing 50 halfs before she is done.

Leslie credits family – especially husband Devin, who she married in 2015 – friends, and her faith for helping her along on this journey. Though she loves sports, she isn’t athletic, and doesn’t consider herself fast by any means, but feels everyone deserves a place in the running community and is happy with her place in it.

The Reluctant Runner

“I call myself a reluctant runner because I hate it and love it, but think most of us have the same feelings,” Leslie said. “There is that quote by Eric Liddell (1924 Olympian, inspiration for the movie Chariots of Fire) that I love: ‘I believe God made me for a purpose… but he also made me fast and when I run I feel His pleasure’. Two out of those three are true for me. I was made for a purpose, and I truly think I feel God’s smile when I run.”

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