After undergoing a heart transplant in her mid-40s, Risa Rambo found refuge—as well as a rigorous physical rehab regimen—in competitive sports activities.
She earned medals in two different runnings of The Transplant Games of America, including being the most Valuable Participant for the Team Georgia in 2012.
A year later, the former high school and college basketball player was at her home on St. Simons Island when she suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, a life-threatening rupture of a blood vessel in the brain.
“My son found me, I was unconscious,” Rambo, 63, says in an interview with East Cobb News in the lobby of the Sterling Estates assisted living community on Lower Roswell Road, where she has lived for the last eight years.
After being rushed to a hospital in nearby Brunswick, Ga., she had emergency brain surgery. Rambo was unconscious for several weeks, and later had to undergo a more grueling rehab in Atlanta at the Shepherd Center, which helps patients recover from spinal cord and brain injuries.
She would be lifted out of bed by rehab specialists, and “they would work you real hard,” from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. almost daily.
“They had to teach me how to walk again,” Rambo said. “I was real scared.”
Part of the therapy was putting a basketball in her hand when she walked, to keep her head up.
Rambo, who as Risa Turton was a hoops star at Crisp Academy and Crisp County High School in Cordele, Ga., and played at the University of Mississippi and Mercer University, knew she would never be able to live the same way again.
After college, she married and raised three sons, and after her divorce, stayed active playing golf on St. Simons. She returned there after leaving Shepherd.
But she could no longer do basic things for herself, such as cook or even change bed linens.
“I just needed help,” she said. “I couldn’t live by myself.”
Paige Sander, her sister and legal guardian, lives in East Cobb, and in 2015 Rambo came to live at Sterling Estates to be closer to her. There, the staff cooks her meals, does her laundry and cleans her room once a week.
She walks with something of a limp, but is alert and responsive in a busy facility where she greets everyone, including a 106-year-old resident.
Rambo takes walks around the Sterling Estates pedestrian loop and enjoys the facility’s small pool.
But she says she wants to try cooking again soon, and desires some more independence.
Most of all, Rambo wants to get back to the Transplant Games, which became a major source of support and social life with her fellow transplant recipients.
The next Transplant Games take place in the summer of 2024 in Birmingham, Ala., and Rambo is excited about an in-person return. A virtual competition took place during the pandemic, and she was mailed some medals.
But she misses the camaraderie and wants her family to take part in the experience, which like the Olympics also includes opening and closing ceremonies.
“This one is so close,” Rambo said. “I hope my boys and my sister can go. The closer it gets, the harder I train.”
She wants to compete in swimming, cycling and basketball. She and her sister attend Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, where Rambo shoots basketball two or three times a week.
“I’m still trying to get it up to the goal,” she said. “I’ve got a year to work on it.”
Rambo says she can drive, but prefers not to, and gets where she needs to go with her sister and via the Sterling Estates vans that circulate around East Cobb.
She has checkups twice a year at Emory University for her heart, and said that she “checked out well” after a recent EKG.
While she knows the activities are helpful for her brain and body, it’s the connection to others that she values just as much.
After having to retire due to her medical situation, Rambo said “I didn’t do anything for a while, and I got depressed. I wasn’t sleeping.”
At Sterling Estates, she pulls out the facility’s daily activities calendar, which is crammed with outings, bingo, movies and physical therapy and exercise sessions.
She also enjoys spending time with friends she has made on the Team Georgia of the Transplant Games. They’ve gone to Braves games and are having a fish fry in August.
Rambo speaks matter-of-factly about the myriad of health issues she’s endured—”I’ve come a long way”—and even the death of one of her sons last year to suicide at the age of 30.
A good support system, Rambo said, has been vital for her recovery.
“You trust in God, and my friends and my family,” she said.
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