Heart insufficiency at nursing school: Transplantation trip of the Missouri woman

ST. Louis – A mother of Columbia, Missouri, at home, learned while eight months pregnant with her third child whom she had a rare genetic mutation. Pregnancy has unmasked the symptoms of heart failure, but it is only the beginning of its history.

Gracyn Laidler, now aged 29, was 24 years old when she discovered that her heart worked 25%. She was voluntarily tested after her mother was diagnosed with the same mutation.

“Lots of heart failure, symptoms, imitates pregnancy, symptoms, shortness of breath, swelling, all of this,” said ugly. “My ekgs have never returned abnormal. So no one thought about it. … This is not the electric part, it’s a pumping part. And the only way you will discover it is by an echo.”

Pregnancy was induced three weeks earlier, and things gradually moved downhill with ugly health. She would wear a lifestyle in case she was going to stop heart because she was determined to breastfeed her baby, but then a fight with Covid-19 earned her a cardiac stimulator and a defibrillator.

As her condition gets worse, the ugliness and her husband were forced to leave their three children, every seven years, with her family. They traveled two hours at the Jewish Barnes Hospital in St. Louis to connect with a transplant team.

In order to appear on the list for a transplant, “you cannot be too sick, but you have to be sick enough, if that makes sense,” she said.

Ugly was not sick enough, so she got home. But a few months later, her heart went from 20% to 8%, and it was listed as a five status, then finally, status two. So she returned to Saint-Louis.

One of the doctors she met during her stay in St. Louis was Dr. Joel Schilling, cardiologist at Washington University at Barnes-Jewish hospital. He said that over time, his specific mutation leads to a weakening of the heart muscles.

During her stay in the hospital’s intensive care unit, she noticed that other patients were much older than she, the ambassadors were older and that no one had young children at home.

The average age of a transplant is 55, said Schilling. He also said that he wanted to demystify the myth that the common cause of a transplant was smoking or lack of exercise. It is for reasons like those of ugly.

Although her husband stayed by her side, she felt completely isolated and alone.

“There are a lot of psychological trauma that accompanies a diagnosis with a condition that can only be healed by fairly aggressive therapy like the transplant, and you are then in the hospital while waiting for this transplant,” said Schilling. “Of course, transplants by its nature, we never know exactly when we are going to get the right organ at the right time, so you are in survival mode.”

Seven weeks later, LAIDLER received his new heart and began his new life.

But even after the transplant, Hope did not come easily.

She was focused on the fact that her three children had this mutation. She was focused on what she didn’t have.

The most important thing for Schilling is that his patients are considered humans. Thus, he said that he accomplishes this by recognizing them as well as their feelings.

When Uaidler thinks of these dark times, she attributes to Schilling for her care.

“I want to be this hope for someone else,” said ugly. “No matter what doctors say transplantation, they don’t know what you are going through. The only people who know what you are going through are the people who have experienced?”

His healing began not only physically, but emotionally – speaking of his history and becoming a defender of organ donation.

“It healed me in a way that I did not even know possible,” she said.

Ugly admitted that she was lost in maternity, then was completely lost in the hospital. But his journey gave him his clarity. Instead of sweating little things, she now dreams of big.

Laidler is now at nursing school to become a nurse in transplantation: “I have this new lease on life. I have this new heart. I want to honor my donor in the best possible way, and I want it to be worth it, as I want to make a difference.”

Schilling is delighted for her.

Although Uaidler appreciated Schilling’s empathy, she knew they couldn’t understand her fate.

THE Average heart transplant lasts 15 years In America, said Schilling.

“We have patients approaching 35 to 40 years,” he said. “It’s really a miracle, and the duration of life that people can get is quite great.”

As for the children of ugly, Schilling said that the goal was to make sure that the heart lasts as long as possible before they need a transplant and that they would not have a sudden death of something that is avoidable.

“It is better to be armed with this knowledge,” he said.

Now LAIDLER provides a significant return to Saint-Louis. June 17 – Her 30th anniversary – She will be back at Barnes -Jewish Hospital, not as a patient, but as a source of support for others who are still waiting.

“It’s normal to be sad. It’s normal to cry,” she said. “It is normal to feel everything you need to feel, but do not give up because you have a life worth living, and an organ donor is ready to give you this life.”