When Carrollton resident Bart Grisham, 62, began having shortness of breath, he sought care at Tanner Heart & Vascular Specialists.

Upon learning that he had too many blockages for stents, he and his wife, Betsy, decided — after much research and discussion with Tanner’s cardiothoracic surgery team — to have his open-heart surgery at the Adams Heart Center inside Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton.

Pat Shumake noticed a strange feeling in her chest. Concerned, she drove herself to the emergency department at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton.

She had never had heart issues before, but she would soon have a triple bypass performed by cardiothoracic surgeon Omar Lattouf, MD, and the open-heart surgery team at Tanner Health's Adams Heart Center in Carrollton. "I'm blessed to have been here," said Shumake.

Villa Rica resident and Southwire employee Stoney Ray Cheeks, now age 45, had his first heart attack and got two stents back in 2013 when he was only 35.

So when he began having chest pain again on Jan. 25, 2023, Cheeks was open to the idea of open-heart surgery.

As Penny Freeman laid in her bed, the thought that couldn’t leave her mind: “If I fall asleep now, I’m not going to wake up.” She forced herself out of bed — but couldn’t make herself believe that she might be having a heart attack. Freeman tried to go about her day.

She and her sons went to Carrollton to get lunch at Zaxby’s. But she couldn’t get over the feeling that something was wrong. “God was trying to tell me something,” she said. 

When Brian Sims, chief of police for Mount Zion, first experienced a little discomfort in his chest during a workout last September, he didn’t worry about it.

After all, he was fairly fit and he was only 50. He seemed like an unlikely candidate to be Tanner’s first open-heart surgery patient.