Meyer shares from the heart
Meyer helped Brianna Achenbach on her way to becoming the 2011 Dairy Princess. (Press photo by Melissa Spielbauer-Combs)
By Molly Moser
February is a month for hearts – candy hearts, paper hearts, and human hearts. American Heart Month, federally designated in 1964, reminds us that cardiovascular diseases are still the leading global cause of death. One Guttenberg resident knows all too well the effects of a malfunctioning heart. After a decade dealing with swollen joints and doctors appointments, local dairy farmer Dan Meyer was forced to make a life-altering decision when doctors realized he would need open heart surgery.
Meyer, who has served on the Clayton County Fair Board for 30 years, was busy banding people entering the fair in August of 2003. “I got to meet all the little kids, and I loved that because they’re just so joyous,” Meyer smiled. But banding made his hands sore, and before long he was shivering as if it were mid-winter. A trip to Mayo Clinic left him without answers, and he continued to battle swollen hands, wrists, ankles and knees while milking cows on the family farm and finding his second passion – showing animals at the fair.
Guttenberg resident Noah Sadewasser was the first to show one of Meyer’s Guernseys at the Clayton County Fair in 2005, and he earned a trophy. In the five years that followed, Meyer’s cows won over 50 trophies. Many of those trophies were taken home by siblings Joe Murray and Brianna Achenbach.
Achenbach began helping out on the Meyer farm, fearlessly climbing a 60-foot silo and eventually becoming Clayton County Dairy Princess. She’s won seven awards with Meyer’s cows, and her younger brother Joe has earned nine of his own. Meanwhile, mom Brenda Murray began helping Meyer as well.
“Brenda is my guardian angel. She was there every time I needed some help,” said Meyer. As it turned out, he would need a lot of help.
In November of 2012, Meyer found himself unable to get out of bed. Doctors told him he’d be on his back with an IV for a month, but in fact he’d never return to the family farm. He worried about his cows. “Brenda and Brianna were milking, and my friend Roland Hansel would come up and help them, but we had to sell the cows. That was my whole life,” Meyer recalls.
By December, he had been transported to Iowa City for a valve replacement. After the surgery, his kidneys shut down and fluid began building up around his lungs. “The day I was released out of there, the surgical doctor said, ‘We didn’t tell you this, but we were about ready to close you back up and get you a heart transplant,’” Meyer told The Press. He had a brand new mechanical valve, but his journey was far from over.
Back in Guttenberg, the doctors and nurses at GMH were making an impression on their long-term resident. They threw him a surprise birthday party in January and continued to care for him and his many visitors. They sang to him when he was having trouble sleeping, and taught him ways to get through all the needle-pokes. “I thought being a farmer was stressful; being a nurse is stressful. Nursing is hard, and we need nurses,” he said.
Meyer stayed in the Kann room at GMH, where his close friend Brandon Kann assured him he’d recover because there was ‘so much Kann flying around in there.’ Murray encouraged Meyer to do things on his own, and he says, “If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be alive.”
For three and a half years, Meyer recuperated under the supervision of doctors and nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and cardiac therapists. “All our doctors know what’s going on with me. They communicate very, very well,” he said. “You’ve got to appreciate good health. Even if you live by the rules, and I did, on the spur of the moment, you can still fall down.”
In December of 2015, Meyer experienced another devastating blow. The infection that had affected his heart and joints had spread into his bloodstream, and a cardiologist discovered another valve in his heart that needed replacing.
Meyer wasn’t sure he wanted to go through another heart surgery. He asked several close friends whether they thought he had anything left to give back, and they assured him that he did. So in May of 2016, Meyer went back under the knife. But this time, his kidneys kept working. “I came out of it better than the surgeons thought I would,” he told The Press.
Today, Meyer lives on his own in Guttenberg – but he’s got a big circle of friends surrounding him. He describes Murray as the hub of the wheel, with Bob Walke driving him to fair board meetings and Harlan Reyerson getting him to winter doctor appointments and church on time. In the summer, Meyer walks to his appointments at Cornerstone Family Practice. On the way home he makes a regular pit stop at the home of Myrna Backes for cookies and water.
Following his surgeries, Meyer flew to Florida to visit his brother, Dave. The brothers are less than a year apart in age and are very close. After Meyer stopped farming, he found he had more freedom to travel. In September, he met his brother in Dallas for a Cowboys football game, which really got his shiny new heart valves ticking.
Though many do not survive all that Meyer has been through, he’s looking to the future – and maybe toward another trophy from the Clayton County Fair. This year, he plans to help Joe Murray show cows.
