My name is Kelly and I am 28 years old and a mother to 3 beautiful children. I have two boys from a previous marriage and on April 17th 2013 I had my beautiful baby girl. The pregnancy was very easy except having to have a third c-section due to me having a solitary pelvic kidney. Towards the end of the pregnancy I had a lot of fainting spells but the doctors told me not to worry. I was so happy when I came home from the hospital after having her to relax and enjoy my children. Not even 4 hours after being home I spiked a fever and ended up back in the hospital for a uterine infection from the c-section. I figured nothing after that could get any worse. I was tired all the time, swollen like crazy (had not lost a single pound after having my daughter...come on now I just had a baby i should have at least lost her weight but nope). I breastfed her and would fall asleep with her on my chest and i would wake up weezing and unable to breath. I finally had had enough so my husband left to go to work and I packed up my 3 1/2 week old daughter and went to the ER thinking my asthma was acting up. I get there and they sit me on a bed in the hallway and I tell the Doctor all of my symptoms and she listened to my chest and I swear I have never seen doctors move so fast. They got me into a private room and told me that I was in heart failure and that I needed to call my husband to come to the hospital immeaditly. I was so scared. They told me that if i hadn't come in when i did that my husband would have been planning my funeral. I was in fluid overload, have postpartum cardiomyopathy and blood clots in my lungs. I had never been so scared in my life. My family came up to see me and we all cried. I was put on tons of medicines and had to have a pericardal window done to drain the fluid. That surgery caused more blood clots and caused the sac around my heart to harden and calcify so they had to crack my chest open to remove the anterior sac from my heart and a thymoma (not sure of the spelling) that had to be removed. That surgery caused me to have even more blood clots along with me bleeding into my left lung and causing it to partially collapse. My ejection fracture to this day is in the 20s and its been almost 2 years. I still am weak, and lose my breath walking around my house! I can't keep the fluid down to save my life and I am in chronic pain from the inflammation and damage to the inside of my chest. I am also waiting for a new heart. I am currenlty on the heart transplant list and I have never wanted something so badly. I can't play with my kids like I used too. I want to go on field trips, take cupcakes to school, to be able to be the supermom i once was. I can't work and my hospital bills are piling up. During all of this my husband fell off of his tow truck at work and broke his back and also had kidney stones. My husband is finally able to go to school now to try to better our lives but it just feels like things are never going to get better. So between him going to school and working part time money is so tight. It stresses me out and thats bad for my heart. I used to have home health care nurses come to the house but our bill got to high and they won't come out anymore. I never in a million years thought this is what my life would be like. I never had even heard of postpartum cardio myopathy. Most of the time I can't get out of bed, just walking a few feet can be the hardest chore. I live in chronic pain with every breath. I pretty much feel like I am trapped in a body that just won't go. I have cried myself to sleep many a nights but finally realized if i die before I get a new heart i don't want my kids remembering mommy crying all the time so I try my hardest to keep on fighting because I want to be here for my kids. I lost my mother to diabetes when I was 4 years old and I don't want my kids to go through the heart ache of growing up without a mother. So I may have my bad day health wise but everyday I wake up is a blessing to be with my kids and husband. Thank you for reading my story/ rant.
Kelly
My Details
- Date Diagnosed: 07/05/2013
- Child: 3
- Initial EF: 25
- Current EF: 20
Story By Kelly Cathleen