THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: The wait for Windy’s heart — Diagnosed with cardiac sarcoidosis, Windy Manzardo of Coeur d’Alene went through a lot before her heart transplant

It all started with some palpitations. 

Followed by months of trying to figure out what was going on. 

Getting “shocked” 18 times. 

There was the broken back, and other maladies. 

There was the chance meeting at the hospital with a friend who was going through the same thing. 

There was mostly optimism, but the occasional worry. 

Followed, nearly four years later, by the call Coeur d’Alene resident Windy Manzardo had long been waiting for. 

And eventually answered. 

THE STORY begins in November 2021. 

Windy Manzardo was having lunch with her son, Kyle, in Spokane Valley. 

Kyle, the former Lake City High and Washington State star, just completed his first full season as a first baseman/designated hitter for the Cleveland Guardians in 2025. 

He and younger brother Marcus had been coached most of their life growing up by their father, Paul, a longtime youth baseball coach in the area, who is now in his 33rd year working at North Idaho College. 

Windy, 52, graduated from Clark Fork High in 1991, where the former Windy Eagle played volleyball and basketball, and ran track for a year. She met Paul at the University of Idaho, where he was doing some post-graduate work after attending Ferris State in Big Rapids, Mich. 

Paul worked in recreation at Memorial Gym at the U of I, doing facility maintenance, and running intramural sports and special events. 

While attending school there, Windy worked in the weight room, and the gym. 

“I was working in the weight room one night, on a Saturday evening or Friday evening,” Windy recalled. “He comes around, ‘just checking on things,’” 

"Just making sure everything was all right," Paul deadpanned. 

They were married in 1996 in Sandpoint, and will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary in August. 

Back in June 2021, Kyle had been drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays, and spent the rest of the season at the team’s rookie facility in Florida before returning home late in 2021. 

“I had been having some palpitations, nothing that really worried me that much, nothing that made me feel like I was going to pass out,” Windy recalled earlier this month, in their Coeur d’Alene home. “Most palpitations, people have them and they are pretty benign, so I didn’t think much of it. But the day we went to lunch, I was having a lot of them, and they were pretty consistent.” 

She mentioned something to Kyle, and he told his mom she should probably get it checked out. 

At the time, Windy was a cardiac nurse at Kootenai Health, “so I had access to people,” she said. 

The following night at work, Windy was still having palpitations, and a coworker suggested she hook herself up to a telemonitor.  

“I was figuring it was a pretty benign thing, like atrial arrhythmia,” Windy said. “That was what I was expecting to see, but when I hooked myself up, that wasn’t what it was. It was the scary arrhythmia, like VTAC (Ventricular Tachycardia).” 

She waited for the electrophysiology doctor, who was in the lab at the time.  

“When he came out I showed him the EKG and he was like, 'What the heck, who’s that?’ 

‘It was me.’ 

“He’s like, well, this is not good. You need to go to the emergency room right now.”

Windy said she felt OK, a little sweaty, but wasn’t feeling like she was going to pass out. 

"So I went to the emergency room and checked myself in and that was the start of a really crappy deal.”

AT FIRST, they thought it was a virus that could possibly attack the heart. 

Windy started on meds, but instead of making her feel better, she started feeling worse. 

She was wearing a life vest — it was basically like an external defibrillator, it can sense arrhythmia, and it can shock you from the outside.  

She was still having a lot of VT (abnormal heartbeat), so they scrapped the vest and put in a defibrillator.  

“And they still didn’t know what she had,” Paul said. 

The next spring, in 2022, Paul and Windy traveled to Bowling Green, Ky., where Kyle was playing for the Rays’ class High-A farm club. 

It was about that time Windy was told she had cardiac sarcoidosis, an inflammatory condition of the heart which can lead to arrhythmias, heart failure or even sudden cardiac death. 

“I’m a nurse and I tell people not to look online, but I looked online,” Windy said after getting the diagnosis. 

And? 

“Dang, this is not good.” 

A DEFRIBRILATOR can shock a person out of a bad arrhythmia. 

One time, in November 2022 when Kyle and Paul were at home, Windy got “shocked” some 18 times. 

“It’s like getting kicked by a mule,” Paul said. 

“It’s very unpleasant, and scary,” Windy said. “That, of all of this, is the scariest thing. Because if the defibrillator doesn’t work, you’re not going to make it. And not knowing when the arrhythmias were going to come on. Most of the time it was out of the blue. I didn’t feel bad that day at all, In fact, I went to breakfast,” and planned to go to a craft fair later that day. 

Instead, she stayed home. 

“I was sitting on the couch, and it went off, and I yelled,” Windy said. “Paul and Kyle were upstairs. I called my nurse friends, and they said, 'Get on the floor, we’ll call 911.’ It just went off over and over and over. And it was legitimate, because I kept going back into VTAC.  

"That was a terrible day. I didn’t think I was going to make it, to be honest.” 

She was rushed via ambulance to the emergency room at Kootenai Health. 

"I’m a cardiac nurse, so I know when things aren’t good,” Windy said. “They’re hanging a last-resort medication and if this doesn’t work, I don’t know what they’re going to do with me (as Kootenai is not equipped to handle what she was going through). And Sacred Heart (in Spokane) didn’t have an ICU bed.” 

The hospital in Seattle that could treat her was full. San Jose was an option. So was the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. 

Finally, they found a bed for Windy in Spokane, and “by the next day I was sitting up in my ICU chair and feeling pretty good,” she said.  

Windy was told she needed a new heart, and went on the transplant list in November 2022. 

She had been working at Kootenai Health, and stopped working then. 

In addition to formerly coaching baseball at Lake City High and at NIC, Paul Manzardo has been a high school football and basketball official for years. 

In late 2022, Paul was assigned to work a state football playoff game in Pocatello.  

Instead, he had to cancel, so he could stay in the hospital with his wife. 

WINDY WAS on high steroids to control the sarcoid, but those steroids were bad for her bones. 

Her diaphragm was paralyzed on the left side.  

Her left lung was collapsed. 

She learned she was allergic to aspirin. 

And on and on. 

During rehab, she was lifting weights one day when she heard a big pop. She had suffered several compression fractures in her lower back. 

In fall 2023, Paul and Windy traveled to the Mayo Clinic, where she was told they didn’t know what else to do for her.  

“I said that’s not very reassuring. If you’re stumping the Mayo Clinic ... “ said Windy, seated in their living room in a specially made recliner that helps her stand up. 

So, they kept plugging along.  

She tried immuno suppressant therapy, and said that worked better than the steroids.  

She said if she hadn’t hooked herself up to the telemonitor back in November 2021 and had the arrhythmia, seen a doctor and started treatment, she probably would have died from VTAC. 

“VTAC is an arrhythmia that starts at the bottom of the heart,” said Windy, the cardiac nurse and now patient, “where a normal heartbeat starts at the top of the heart, and the signal travels down to the bottom of the heart and the heart beats. But when the heartbeat starts at the bottom of the heart, it beats fast, and blood pools and it doesn’t pump well. It tires out, and leads to VFIB (ventricular fibrillation) and then death.” 

There was a time Windy was off the transplant list, because she was too sick even if a heart came. A few times she temporarily came off the list to go watch Kyle play in Cleveland, as you had to be within 6 hours of Spokane in case a heart became available. 

Windy and Paul flew to Cleveland in May 2024, when he was first called up to the big leagues.  

They went in October 2024, when Cleveland played Detroit in the AL Division Series. They went back there early this past season. 

She stayed on the list even when they traveled to Anaheim, or spring training in Arizona, because they had friends with private planes who could get them home within that 6-hour window) if needed. 

Ditto for watching Marcus, a 2021 Lake City High grad who played two seasons at Community Colleges of Spokane, and two seasons at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. 

“If there was some sort of blessing, if I were working, I would never have been able to attend as many of his games as I did,” Windy said.   

Seattle was also close enough, so they went to watch Kyle play against the Mariners at the beginning of this past season. 

“I was wondering if I was ever going to get a heart,” Windy said. “I didn’t want to come off the list, because that heart was messed up, and I was tired of worrying about the arrhythmias. Even though I was feeling better, at some point the arrhythmias were probably going to come back. And the meds that I was taking to control the arrhythmia didn’t make me feel great. I was just hoping a heart was going to come in time. 

“I was always optimistic about getting a heart,” Windy added. “But there was a few times, when one thing led to another, I wondered, ‘is this what it’s like leading up to death?’” 

ONCE WINDY was diagnosed with cardiac sarcoidosis, all of her care took place at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane. 

That’s where Dan Christ stopped by one day. 

Paul knew Dan from baseball; Dan’s son Nolan played on the Coeur d’Alene team that made it to the Little League World Series in 2018, and Paul was asked to speak to the team before they left for Williamsport. Nolan had played against Marcus growing up, and Dan was often the P.A. guy when Paul would bring the lineup card to the press box. 

Not long after Windy’s PT “storm” put her in the hospital in November 2022, Paul and Dan ran into each other out in the hall. 

“What are you doing here?” Paul asked. 

“Being treated for cardiac sarcoidosis,” Dan replied. 

“No way,” Paul said. “That’s why my wife is here.” 

Dan, a social worker who was in the midst of a 200-day stay at Sacred Heart at the time, visited Windy’s room. 

“It was really nice for us to run into each other, because our stories were so much the same,” said Windy, who spent some two months in the hospital after her VT storm. “We both have February birthdays, both have had a melanoma, we both got married in August.  

“I said, 'You know, Dan, this is getting a little weird. We have way too much in common,’” Windy said. 

Dan, who began to show symptoms in 2020, and went on the transplant list in February 2022, would receive his new heart in March 2023. 

“He waited a long time, too,” Windy said. “No. I’m not like that (wondering ‘when am I getting mine?’). I’m not the person who says 'why me?’ Crappy things happen to a lot of people.”   

In April 2025 Windy went back to work part-time, at a private clinic where they needed a nurse, but the work was more low-key. 

She was feeling as well as she’d felt since November 2021. 

WHEN YOU’RE on the transplant list, they say to ALWAYS answer your phone. Even if it looks like a spam call. 

On Sunday night, July 6, 2025, Paul and Windy were attending mass at St. Pius Catholic Church in Coeur d’Alene. 

It was after communion, near the end of the service. 

“My phone kept going off; it kept vibrating,” Paul recalled, from his chair in the living room. “I wondered, 'Who in the heck keeps vibrating,’ because I just put it out of my mind.” 

“It had been almost three years,” Windy said. “We were told, ‘you have to answer every phone call,’ but it had been almost three years, and like, church is almost over.” 

Still seated in the pew, Paul then checked his phone and saw a text from Dr. Mooney with the good news. 

“He looks at me ... ‘We’ve got to go. We’ve got a heart,’” said Windy, whose phone was also going off. “I was a little irritated at first, because he elbowed me. 

“So we jumped up in the middle of church and ran out, trying to get a hold of the doctor. It was wild,” Windy added. “We hadn’t given up, but we weren’t as diligent as we should have been about answering every phone call. We’re like, we’re in church, and it’s going to be over in 10 minutes.” 

“I was getting peppered; I didn’t know if it was one of the boys,” Paul said of his phone. “Finally I looked down and it was like ‘Paul, answer your phone, this is Dr. Mooney.’ He started texting …” 

"I know they would have kept trying,” Windy said. “But ultimately, you only have so long. If you don’t answer, they’re going to give that heart to somebody.” 

Meanwhile, Marcus was at home, in his room, when his parents came home from church. 

“She just knocked on my door and said, ‘Hey, I got a heart.’ I was like, ‘Whoa,’” Marcus recalled. “I didn’t really process what it was, and then it hit me. It had been so long. I wouldn’t say I gave up hope, but I kinda forgot she still needed a transplant because of how well she was doing.” 

Meanwhile, Kyle and his teammates had just landed in Houston, where the Guardians were to begin a three-game series with the Astros the following night.  

Kyle and a few of his teammates were at dinner. 

“I had just missed a call from Marcus,” recalled Kyle, sitting on the aforementioned couch, a few feet from his brother.  

Kyle figured he’d call his brother after dinner. Then he missed a call from his dad. Then Marcus texted him. 

Kyle played in 53 games in two stints with the Guardians in 2024. He made the big club coming out of spring training in 2025 and would be there all season, playing pretty much every day, either at DH or at first. 

Still ... 

“I struggle saying it was terrible timing, but we were on a 10-game losing streak,” Kyle recalled. “Obviously I’m going home and I’m not going to miss this, but in the back of my head I hope nobody’s sitting there going, ‘this dude’s running out on us.’” 

Folks around baseball knew about Kyle and his mom’s heart condition; stories had been written. But while Paul was home and Marcus was close to home over the past few years, Kyle was mostly on the road, in his job as professional baseball player, his mom on his mind from afar. 

“I didn’t realize the weight I was carrying with it until it was done,” Kyle said. 

“He internalizes things,” Windy said. “He looked fine on the outside, but I think he internalized it a lot.” 

Eventually, Kyle went outside the restaurant and called home, and heard the good news. Then he went back inside and had dinner — they had already ordered. 

“I was trying to plan my next steps,” Kyle said. “I ate dinner and thought, ‘What do I do about this?’ 

“I asked (teammate) Austin Hedges, as we were walking back to the hotel, how to go about it, what do I do? 

“He said 'you’re going to text JJ, our travel guy, then you’re going to call Vogter (Stephen Vogt, the Guardians manager). And then you’re going to leave, whenever they can get you out. But you’re going to leave.” 

Kyle called Vogt and “he was super, super stoked for us,” Kyle said. “He was really excited, and I was stunned still. He was like ‘dude, go, stay as long as you need. I think that family list is up to 5 days, but if you need to stay through the All-Star break, we can definitely arrange for that. Go be with your family.’” 

Kyle was placed on something called the Family Emergency List. He flew from Houston to Spokane on Monday, and was there for mom’s transplant on Tuesday morning and there when she  started to come out of it on Wednesday.  

He left Thursday to rejoin his teammates, then played three games in Chicago before the All-Star break. 

“I felt kinda bad, leaving in the middle of the season,” Kyle said.  

Paul said one of the doctors kidded Kyle, noting the Guardians started to win once he left to come home and be with his mom. 

While Kyle was away during most of his mom’s ordeal, Marcus was relatively close to home. 

When he was at Spokane Falls Community College and his mom was in the hospital, he would go to practice, shower and hang out in the hospital room with his mom, sometimes bringing his laptop to study.  

When it came time to move on to a four-year school, Marcus said he chose Central in part because it was close to home; his parents were able to make it to all of his home games during his two seasons there. 

These days, he’s living at home, working at Sacred Heart, where he plans to eventually return to school to become a physician’s assistant or emergency room technician. 

WINDY WAS in the hospital for 11 days before heading home following the transplant. 

There were a few rough days early on, then she started feeling better. She hasn’t been back to work since the transplant, but hopes to eventually, perhaps next July, which would be one year after the transplant. 

Windy said she would like to know where her heart came from, but has been told most of the time, the recipient never finds out, as the family of the donor just wants to move on. 

“After a year, I can write a letter to the donor’s family, but it’s 100 percent up to them whether they reach back or not,” she said.  

"I will reach out, but I will understand if they don’t reach back.” 

She had to get a pacemaker installed following her transplant, due to a slower-than-normal heartbeat. 

Paul resigned as Lake City baseball coach in November 2022 so he could be more available for Windy’s doctor’s appointments, etc. Plus, Windy said she was “super fortunate” to have several nurse friends living nearby who could be there quickly, if needed. And lots of other friends and relatives have helped out. 

“It was nice to see family and friends rally behind us,” Windy said. “Reminded you that there’s many more good people out there than bad, that’s for sure.” 

“I think God only gives you things you can handle,” Paul said. 

If that’s the case ... 

“Man, he’s got a lot of faith in me,” Windy said.  

“I think Windy got it over me because she could handle it better than me,” Paul said. “I don’t think I would have handled it as well as she did.” 

Dan Christ, referred to by nurses at Sacred Heart as “Windy’s Twin” because of their similar stories, is sometimes asked to share the story of his heart transplant with groups. 

If Windy was asked to speak ... 

"My message would be, if you can try to be positive — I do think that a positive mental outlook is helpful. It helps with everything,” Windy said. “Dealing with what comes, recovery, it really helps with healing. I know it’s hard to be positive all the time. 

“And I’m just grateful. Of course I’m grateful for my donor ... but I used to tell people, I was positive because I still had an option; when something like this comes, you think of people who are given a cancer diagnosis, and they’ve got a month left. I still had some hope. Transplants, if you can get on the list and you can get one, they’ve come a long way in their success rates. I was always just happy I still had an option. And I guess I felt confident that it was going to work out.” 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports. 

    Courtesy photo Windy Mandardo, 52, of Coeur d'Alene, in her room at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane on July 7, 2025 — the day before her heart transplant.
  

    Courtesy photo The Manzardo family, from left: Marcus, Windy, Paul and Kyle.