Sara, Cardiac Screening Patient

When Sara talks about heart disease, she gets emotional. It’s not from fear, but from the realization that a simple test saved her family’s lives.

It started with a family history of heart trouble. Sara’s father survived a heart attack at age 48. Years later, her brother Josh suffered one at the exact same age. “He was working on a baseball field and got really sick,” Sara says. “He came to the ER having a heart attack.”

That shock rippled through the family. Sara and her two other siblings decided to get Ballad Health’s cardiac calcium scoring test — a scan that detects plaque buildup in the arteries. What the tests found was staggering.

Sara’s youngest brother, Matt, just 38, went first. His arteries were more than 90% blocked.

“They told him he could have just fallen over dead,” Sara says. “He never had a single heart pain. He never had any symptoms, nothing.”

Matt needed quintuple bypass surgery

While Matt was in open-heart surgery, Sara received her own call. She also had extensive blockages. Within days, she had multiple stents and an angioplasty.

Their sister, Kristy, tested clear. “We tell her she got our mother’s genes,” Sara says.

But the message was undeniable: this test changed everything. “Without this testing, Matt would be dead,” Sara says. “And the same for me.”

The emotions from what they went through surface often. “Every milestone we have, we cry together,” Sara says, taking a moment to compose herself. “At Christmas, we cried. On New Year’s, we cried. We’re just so blessed to still be here.”

What began as one family’s wakeup call soon became something much bigger. As Sara and her siblings shared their stories, friends and family members started asking how they could get checked, too.

“I can’t tell you how many people have had the calcium scoring testing after we shared our testimony,” she says. For some, the results led to stents or even open-heart surgery — care they might never have received in time.

“The test is simple,” Sara says. “You go back, you have the CT scan, and you’re done. Then you know what you’re dealing with and can start your plan right away.”

Sara is a nurse, a mom and a middle school softball coach. “I have a daughter who is going to be on my softball team for the first time this year. Being able to still be here for that is a blessing.”

That’s why she urges others not to wait.

“You never think it could be you,” she says. “But this testing could save your life — just like it did ours.”