Patient Ken Dockery: Inspiring Hope, Giving Back
Hope, says Ken Dockery, is what patients get when they come to Cleveland Clinic. Since his heart valve surgery, he's biked hundreds of miles to raise money for the hospital and is one of the first to share his story through Cleveland Clinic's new advertising campaign, in which patients write "letters to tomorrow."
It was June 6, 2005, and Ken Dockery had just finished the last leg of a 300-mile bike ride to the Cleveland Clinic campus. There, he rode the elevator to the 10th floor of the Heart Center. The doors slid open, and Dockery stepped out, back into the unit where he'd spent six days recovering from open-heart surgery three years earlier. He stood in the hallway, silent, reflective.
Quiet sobs drew his attention.
Nearby, a woman sat alone, head bowed. She moved to let Dockery sit beside her. My Husband is a heart patient here, she explained. He's stopped taking phone calls from family and friends; he doesn't want to live.
Dockery locked his blue eyes on hers and began his story - how he'd been diagnosed with a heart disorder at age 34; how he'd begged the doctors to delay surgery so he could spend Christmas with his family; how he started biking every day during rehab to regain his strength.
Finally, he shared the reason he was at the Cleveland Clinic that day. He was in the middle of a 500-mile bike ride, beginning at his home in Pennsylvania and ending at his parent's home in Detroit, to raise money for the heart program at Cleveland Clinic.
The woman stoood up. "Will you talk to my husband?" she asked.
Dockery entered the man's room and quietly, passionately, shared his story. "Before I left," Dockery recalls, "he asked me to move his telephone down to his bed so he could take calls. His wife wept."
Inspiring hope - this is Dockery's mission.
"I spent six days on the 10th floor really evaluating my life," he says. "America is so focused on getting the promotion, getting to retirement...I couldn't look that far ahead. I started thinking, 'What am I going to give back?'"
So far, Dockery has finished two bike rides which he calls the "Inspire Hope" tours. In all, he's raised $5,000 for the Cleveland Clinic's new Heart and Vascular Institute, scheduled for completion in 2008.
While delivering the second donation, Dockery learned of Cleveland Clinic's new advertising campaign, Letters to Tomorrow. The letters, which focus on what patients look forward to doing after surgery, inspired Dockery to write one of his own. Here is an excerpt:
Don't get used to having me around because I do not intend on staying long," wrote Dockery, remembering how he felt as he went into surgery two years ago. He continued, "...Hello again Room 100-23. I just had to stop by for a visit. I know that it has been 17 months since I was here, but I just had to stop and say, "I told you so.'"
This summer, Dockery is planning a third bike ride, the "Inspire Hope: Coast to Coast" tour, which will begin in Oregon and end in Boston -- a total of 3,628 miles.
"We're all here for one reason," he says. "We're here for hope. That's what this place (Cleveland Clinic) was to me."
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From "InnerPulse Extra," November 2006, a monthly publication for the Cleveland Clinic Community.
