The founder of HEART RESERVE
A clinician. A patient. A mother.
I’m Lisa Zahakos, RPA-C, a physician assistant, medical writer and mother of four. I created HEART RESERVE to make heart health easier to understand and help women bring their own stories into their care. I know what it is like to be the person explaining—and the person waiting for answers.
Read my story
“The patient knows what happened to her. The clinician has the training to decide what that information means medically. Good care requires both.”
My story
My twins, Peter and Maurice, shared one placenta. A dangerous pregnancy complication meant one baby received too little blood and the other too much. One was also growing far less than his brother.
Fetal surgery, an emergency delivery and months of newborn intensive care followed. Medicine saved my sons. Today, they run across soccer fields.
Our story · She Said Next
I share what happened during my twin pregnancy, our NICU months, and why that history belongs in the conversation about my own heart health.
Read our story at She Said Next (opens in a new tab)The diagnosis was Stage 3 twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, or TTTS. Blood was flowing unevenly through connections in the shared placenta.
We traveled to Miami for fetal laser surgery. Ten days later, I delivered both boys by emergency C-section at twenty-eight weeks and five days. Peter came home after fifty-three days in newborn intensive care. Maurice stayed for about three months.
I began Peter & Maurice in 2018, writing in real time through fetal surgery, the NICU and the life that followed. The blog has received approximately 58,000 views and continues to connect me with families facing similar experiences.
Read the Peter & Maurice blog (opens in a new tab)
Did your baby need NICU care? Keep your own health history in the conversation with the free NICU worksheet.
At forty-five, I went for a checkup because I did not feel quite like myself. I began asking which parts of that pregnancy might still matter to me, their mother.
My pregnancy does not mean I will develop heart disease. I cannot say it caused the changes I noticed years later. I wanted to ask: does anything in my history change how we look at my health now?
I built HEART RESERVE to help you prepare for that conversation. You do not need to know every medical term. Start with what happened, what has changed and what you want to keep doing. Your clinician can help you understand your options and decide what comes next.
Build my Heart Story
What my dad taught me
Exercise has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.
Wake up. Brush your teeth. Exercise. That was my dad.
He started lifting weights at thirteen. Growing up, my sister and I went to the gym with him. Eventually, he taught me to train. Movement became part of my life because he made it part of ours.
To me, he is Superman.
He is 75 now, and training is still part of who he is. When he was diagnosed with cancer, some of his first questions were about whether he could keep exercising, keep lifting, and stay strong through what was coming.
That did not surprise me. He has spent more than sixty years making strength a way of life.
Years earlier, when my sons were in the NICU, he drove me back and forth to the hospital. After my C-section, when I couldn’t drive, he took me. He sat beside me through those uncertain days.
When I think about his strength, I think about having him there.
Now, as he goes through cancer treatment, I understand those decades of training differently. I think about the strength, muscle, and endurance he built through thousands of ordinary days, long before he knew what life would ask of him.
That is what reserve means to me: the physical capacity we build, and work to preserve, for the life ahead.
Training cannot guarantee how treatment will go. I am grateful for every year he spent caring for his body, and I understand more clearly why I care for mine.
I want to keep moving, remain independent, and be there for my children as they grow, just as he has always been there for me.
I am training for the future I want to be strong enough to live.
My dad helped me begin. At 75, he is still showing me why we keep going.
My commitment to advocacy
When I was pregnant with Peter and Maurice, we were given frightening possibilities for both of our babies. They shared a placenta, Maurice was growing far less than his brother, and questions about their health seemed to grow with every appointment. I was a physician assistant, but I was also their mother, searching for someone who could help us understand what was happening and what options remained.
Other mothers shared their experiences with me. Mary at the TTTS Foundation directed me toward Dr. Ruben Quintero. On Palm Sunday, someone who had seen my post sent me his phone number.
I called. He answered.
Dr. Quintero spent hours speaking with me. He explained twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, listened to my questions and invited us to Miami for further evaluation. He was honest about the uncertainty. His willingness to investigate and help gave us a next step when we desperately needed one.
When the TTTS worsened, he performed fetal laser surgery while my sons were still inside me. An emergency delivery and months in the NICU followed.
During those months, I prayed for the things many parents get to take for granted: breathing without help, feeding, coming home. Today, I watch my boys run across soccer fields. My gratitude to Dr. Quintero, the teams who cared for them and the people who helped us reach that care is part of every ordinary day we get to have together.
I began writing because I needed somewhere to put what we were living through. Writing helped me process it. Sharing helped me connect. And I knew another mother might be searching for a story just as I once had.
That is where my commitment to advocacy began.
It continues through supporting families affected by TTTS, sharing our experience and showing up for the community that helped us. It also lives in HEART RESERVE.
I want women to have clear information, room for their questions and a meaningful voice in their care. I want to help them find the words for experiences they may have carried for years, so that important parts of their history can become part of the conversation.
I know what it meant when someone listened to my story and helped me find my next step. I hope that sharing ours helps another woman find hers.
Lisa Zahakos, RPA-C
Founder, HEART RESERVE
Find Dr. Quintero’s information at The Fetal Institute, the TTTS Foundation’s parent communities, and resources for preemie and NICU families.
My background
I practiced as a physician assistant from 2003–2018. Since 2018, my work has focused on family advocacy and, more recently, women’s heart-health education.
In Dr. Farid’s interventional cardiology practice, I evaluated patients, performed cardiac stress testing, interpreted rhythm recordings and provided medication management and follow-up. My work connected symptoms and test findings with ongoing care and prevention.
I helped patients address blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, nutrition, physical activity and medication adherence as part of reducing cardiovascular risk.
At Dr. Eric R. Braverman’s PATH Medical in New York City, I brought my interventional-cardiology background to cardiovascular assessment and executive physicals. PATH stands for Place for Achieving Total Health; the integrative practice addressed hormones, metabolic health, nutrition, weight management and healthy aging.
I reviewed symptoms, medical history, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, ECGs and prior cardiac testing in preventive, hormone and metabolic care. My patient care also contributed to clinical research activities associated with PATH Foundation NY. Published research from this setting during my tenure examined menopause, hormones, body composition and cognition. I also volunteered with the practice’s Wounded Warrior Program.
See my clinical experience and the practice’s published research.
I provided outpatient psychiatric assessment, medication management and ongoing care for adults with mood, anxiety, attention, sleep and substance use disorders.
I monitored treatment response, side effects, interactions and adherence, coordinated additional medical evaluation, and helped patients work through practical barriers to their treatment plans. This experience strengthened my attention to the relationship between mental health, physical health and daily life.
Community leadership
I support families worldwide facing twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), selective intrauterine growth restriction (SIUGR), fetal surgery and the NICU. I help parents organize questions, find credible information and connect with specialist evaluation and second-opinion pathways.
My sons and I also contribute videos to the TTTS Foundation’s annual December awareness campaign, coordinating with founder Mary Slaman.
I founded and led a volunteer network that delivered more than 500,000 masks to frontline workers. I mobilized professional seamstresses, 20 Broadway costume designers and community volunteers during the pandemic. I led two Citi collaborations supporting frontline workers and back-to-school donations, organized a Lush-supported campaign for 3,000 gift bags, and designed mask adapters that I had 3D printed to help relieve strap pressure for healthcare workers and children.
I’m developing patient-education contributions with the American College of Cardiology’s CardioSmart team, bringing clinical and lived experience to pregnancy history, cardiovascular health and practical questions for healthcare visits.
I’m developing Pregnancy Is Heart History, a case-based CME/CE initiative. Work includes accreditation and grant planning with Global Education Group, hosting and distribution planning with myCME / Haymarket Medical Education, and separate program-development discussions with ReachMD.
These activities are in development; approvals, funding and launch are pending.
I’m developing research questions on reproductive history and cardiovascular risk in consultation with Women’s Health Initiative investigators.
Following our conversations, Graham’s Foundation, NICU Strong, FLRRiSH, Sisters@Heart and Dear NICU Mama agreed to share HEART RESERVE with their communities.
Finalist for Inspiring Change Leader of the Year. The nomination centered on helping women and clinicians make decisions together, free Heart Story resources and community leadership.
Dr. Wenger provided a signed letter supporting my AMA Honors — Excellence in Communication Award nomination, based on the pregnancy and cardiovascular-health writing she reviewed.
With gratitude
Meet the researchers and contributors, read their work, and see what each person contributed to HEART RESERVE.
Meet the researchers & contributorsArticles link to their medical sources and explain what is still uncertain. An expert is named only for the work described in their credit. Education helps you prepare; your clinician helps you decide on your own care.
Read the editorial policyPublished in Healthcare IT Today
By Lisa Zahakos, RPA-C ·
A woman’s latest test result is only one part of her health history. In this guest article, Lisa Zahakos, RPA-C, explores how health records could bring past events, symptoms and results into a timeline that patients and clinicians can review together.
The article considers how to preserve a patient’s own words, check the sources behind a summary, correct errors and make the next step clear.
Read the published article (opens in a new tab)Featured in Women of Wearables
Lisa Zahakos, RPA-C, shares why she founded HEART RESERVE and how her clinical work and experience as a mother shaped its approach to women’s heart health.
Read the interviewSpeaking, media, publishing, and collaboration
Professional inquiries only. Please do not send symptoms, test results, or other personal health information.