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Edmond Life and Leisure - September 25, 2025
Following heart surgery, Edmond man urges others to get regular checkups
By Kimberly Burk, For Edmond Life and Leisure
Open-heart surgery is no fun, says Kevin Morefield, a 47-year-old Edmond insurance agent.
But it did save his life, and now he’s on a mission to nudge others toward regular checkups. He was a four-timesa-week fitness enthusiast who had no noticeable symptoms when he went in March for his annual physical, but an alert primary care physician noticed something amiss.
“He heard a heart murmur,” Morefield said of the doctor who has treated him for about 15 years. “He questioned it, and he said let’s do some further testing.”
Morefield scaled back his workouts while waiting a couple of months to see a cardiologist. On the day of the appointment, everything happened quickly. Follow-up testing revealed his aortic valve was even more enlarged than originally thought. By late afternoon, he and his wife, Halee, were meeting with a cardiovascular surgeon.
“The course of action was to replace it with a mechanical valve,” he said. “That procedure requires complete open-heart surgery.”
It was scheduled for six days later.
“Your life is completely turned upside down,’ Morefield said. “I walked out of the hospital with my wife and I just started crying. I had to tell my young kids, my family. I was facing a very traumatic event, six days away.”
For so many reasons, Morefield was in disbelief. He was physically fit. He had no apparent symptoms. He considered himself rather young to be a heart patient. In his opinion, the cardiac issues in his immediate family were minor, yet he was told his condition was genetic.
Dr. Mohit Pahuja, an assistant professor of medicine and director of inpatient cardiology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, has never treated Morefield. But he said some patients do have lesser symptoms than others.
“There is something called silent heart disease,” he said. “In the initial stages they don’t have symptoms.”
Pahuja said valve problems such as Morefield’s often do occur in younger patients as compared to other types of heart conditions.
Kevin Morefield’s parents, Ken and Eileen Morefield of Edmond, were
scheduled to leave for Norway the day after their son’s surgery was scheduled.
“It was pretty much a gut punch,” Eileen Morefield said. “He was never sick as a child. Nobody could believe it. We stayed home, to get him through this.”
Once Kevin Morefield was on the operating table, there was more surprising news.
“It was supposed to be a five-hour procedure, but it ended up being eight hours,” he said. “The surgeon discovered an aneurism on the valve. It didn’t show up on the scan.”
The aneurism was so thin the doctors could see right through it, More-
field was told, which meant it was close to rupturing.
In the video of his surgery provided by the hospital, which Morefield could not bring himself to watch for a couple of weeks, he heard someone in the operating room say, “this young man was watched over by a Higher Power.”
Eileen Morefield believes that as well.
“We truly believe that God saved our son for a specific reason,” she said. “It is now up to Kevin to open his heart and listen for His voice.”
As he prepared for his surgery, Morefield talked to his daughters about where they wanted to be that day. Braelynn, 11, wanted to be with her mother and other relatives in the surgery waiting room.
“It was terrifying to think of my daughter in the waiting room, but she wanted to do it,” he said.
Addyson, 15, had an important cheerleading practice that day, which he encouraged her to attend. His 21-year-old stepdaughter, Hannah, provided support and transportation that day for Addyson.
Forty-eight hours post-surgery, along came another surprise.
“My heart wasn’t beating on its own,” he said. “I had to have a pacemaker put in.”
Morefield returned to work four weeks after the
surgery but remains in recovery mode. He must learn to sleep on his back. He has a mild case of cardiac depression, which he learned is fairly common among male patients in his age group. He will take a blood thinner for the rest of his life.
But like many who have survived a brush with death, his priorities have become more pronounced. He has a list.
“Don’t stress about the little things,” he said. “Hug your family more. Count your blessings. Don’t focus on the material things you don’t have. Don’t be jealous of anybody else. Love your life. Love God.”
And he hopes to help others catch their cardiovascular problems before they become more serious.
“I spoke at my gym a couple of weeks ago. My biggest ask for people is to go get checked, even if you don’t feel anything. Men are the worst. Men are hard-headed. It’s major surgery. Nobody wants their chest cracked open.”
Ken Morefield spent 26 years in the military, “so checkups often were demanded,” Eileen Morefield said. “We never really said anything to Kevin once he became an adult. Of course, when he told us he had been getting checkups every year, it was kind of a nice surprise. We knew it was not that common for young men to get regular checkups.”
For people with health insurance, an annual physical “doesn’t cost anything but an hour out of that one day, to have peace of mind,” Kevin Morefield said.
