MILES CITY — Cathy Roesler is at the Miles City fairgrounds doing one of the things she loves most in life: working with horses and riding. But, truth is, Roesler's lifestyle is drastically different.
“My heart function is battery operated,” she told MTN Sports while nestled up to her barrel racing horse, Booker.
And when Roesler (pronounced RACE-ler) says, "battery operated" she means 100%.
“It makes you feel kind of creepy, doesn’t it," she said with a hearty laugh, "... that you’re run by a battery — totally.”
Roesler had suffered irregular heartbeats for a few years while navigating three surgeries and a wealth of blood thinners. That’s when Dr. William Dresen at Billings Clinic recommended the ‘Cadillac’ of pacemakers.
“Without having this kind of pacemaker … having the older one, I would have, over time, probably gone into more heart failure,” she said.
Dr. Dresen specializes in electrophysiology, or in layman's terms, studying the heart’s electrical patterns.
“With this WATCHMAN (implant) device, which is placed in the left atrial appendage, we can get patients safely off their blood thinners, giving them the same level of stroke protection as being on a blood thinner,” Dresen said while demonstrating on a plastic heart model.
Roesler admittedly still catches her breath when pushing WATCHMAN’s limit, noticeably when barrel racing. But she admits to exercising with more confidence.
“I get a little short of breath, mostly because of the pacemaker, but that’s OK,” she said after racing around the barrels with Booker.
“The cool factor is that it just gives patients their quality of life back," Dresen said. "They don’t have to worry about the costs and the risks of staying on blood thinners long term. Letting them do what they want to do is one of the best things about medicine."
Meaning Roesler and Booker are far from finished partnering in the arena.
“I’m 69 years old, and probably my first barrel race was at age 6,” Roesler reminisced with a smile.
Over 60 years later, she’s still climbing into the saddle — albeit "battery operated."
