Kasie Wood's Full Heart, Full Life

Kasie Wood of Guntown was born with a fragile heart. Now it’s strong enough to carry her through a life lived at full speed.

“I was very energetic before, but now I’m almost unstoppable,” she says.

A Lifetime of Moving Forward

Born without a septum and with a fragile, underdeveloped mitral valve, Kasie had open-heart surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham when she was just 3 months old. Her surgeon was pioneering a procedure that was experimental at the time.

“It worked,” Kasie says. “I made it to 43.”

And she packed plenty of living into those years. “Growing up, I had no restrictions, no medications. I have always been very active; I played every sport there was,” she says. “I’m the type who gets up at 4 a.m. and goes to bed at 10 p.m., and I move all day.”

Regular heart checkups were part of her life, too. Several years ago, she transitioned to annual visits and later moved her care closer to home.

When Something Felt Different

“My whole life I’ve known my heart beats different than other people,” she says. But by October 2025, Kasie was short of breath and tired all the time. Looking back, she suspects the changes began earlier, but she was reluctant to acknowledge them.

“I could tell when they did the EKG and echocardiogram that things weren’t moving right,” she says. “I’ve seen enough of them over the years to know that something was off. My heart wasn’t functioning like it should.”

Her cardiologist, Dr. Bo Calhoun, referred her to Dr. David Talton at Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery Clinic. Dr. Talton determined that her mitral valve needed attention again. He also discovered another problem: a ventricular septal defect, a hole in the wall between the heart’s lower chambers.

“Because of new technology, they found a large hole on the back side of my heart that no one had ever seen before,” she says. “Dr. Talton was kind and caring but also honest and open with me about what would happen if I didn’t have surgery.”

Kasie had a big CrossFit competition coming up on Dec. 13. “I told Dr. Talton that I wanted to put it off for a year so I wouldn’t miss my competition,” she says. “He said, ‘Well, you probably won’t be alive in another year if we wait, so we’re going to schedule surgery for Monday.’”

Support Through the Setbacks

On Dec. 15, 2025, Kasie had surgery at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo to replace her mitral valve with a mechanical valve. During her recovery in the Critical Care Unit, she developed a right bundle branch block, an abnormality in the heart’s electrical system. Cardiac electrophysiologist Dr. Elsheikh Abdelrahim implanted a pacemaker to help regulate her heartbeat.

She went home on Christmas Eve, but complications with her left lung sent her back to NMMC in mid-January. Dr. Talton performed video-assisted thoracic surgery, and her lung slowly began to heal.

For someone accustomed to moving all day, the setbacks were difficult. “It was a very dark time for me,” Kasie says. Friends from work, her parents and her care team helped her through it. 

“They’re just a wonderful team, and you can tell they really care about what they do,” she says.

Getting Stronger

After her second hospital stay, Kasie participated in NMMC’s Cardiac Rehabilitation program three days a week for 12 weeks. It gave her a way to return to exercise gradually, with encouragement and help finding the right pace.

“I enjoyed Cardiac Rehab because it helped ease me back into working out,” she says. “I could tell each time I went, I got a little bit better.”

She graduated on April 22 and has returned to work and the activities she loves: kickboxing, CrossFit, Pilates and Wellness Center workouts. She also relies on her newfound stamina to take care of 10 pets—including cats, dogs, fish and a giant lizard.

Newfound Energy

Only as she recovered did Kasie begin to understand how different she could feel.  Now, she says, “I’m able to live my life fully with big breaths and a full heart.”