For those of you who know, feel free to skip this. These aren't pleasant memories, but we want to share them with those unaware of what happened.
It took us a year and a half to get pregnant with Ryan. The first half of the pregnancy went well. At the end of the second trimester, I developed an elevated heart rate of 160-190 beats a minute at various times of the day. At seven months, I was taken off work and told to sit at home and gestate. Fortunately, I never ended up on bed rest.
Things progressed well on what I termed "house arrest". My physicians monitored me very closely. One month before my due date, they found that Ryan was in fetal distress and I had a crash C-section. (Not fun just after eating at Jack-in-the-Box.) Ryan was immediately taken to the intensive care unit, where he remained for a month.
Three days after Ryan's birth, I developed severe shortness of breath. To make a very long story short, I was in congestive heart failure secondary to a rare complication of pregnancy called peripartum cardiomyopathy. Instead of my heart beating normally, it just quivered. Ralph said it was basically doing what CPR would. I ended up in ICU and telemetry for almost two weeks, where I was not able to see Ryan for days at a time. The doctor said I had a 30% chance of improving, a 30% chance of staying the same, and a 30% of getting worse, meaning I wouldn't survive. My doctors started the process of which heart transplant center to transfer me.
I'm way too stubborn to die, and I was very fortunate and recovered quickly to the point I could go home. It took a long time to recover my heart function. I was on disability for almost two years.
My cardiologist said I've completely recovered from heart failure, although they continue to monitor me closely. I still have mild tachycardia managed by medication. The cardiologists believe I will have no lasting effect from the heart failure as long as I am never pregnant again.
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