Hearts for Harlow

Welcome to Tina Harlow’s Hearts for Harlow gofundme. We are so glad you have stopped by to read and learn how to help out the Harlows. Please feel free to share this link with family and friends and also leave a message of encouragement at the bottom of the page for Tina or on Tina's Facebook page. Tina will be heading into open-heart surgery Thursday, June 24th. All money raised will go towards medical bills.

First off a little introduction for those who don’t know who Tiff and myself (Colleen) are. We, along with Tina, have been part of each other’s lives for over several decades. We are more than best friends; we are the lucky ones who get to call each other life long friends. While it’s only been a “few” decades, it seems like our friendship has been longer than that – through all our ups and downs in each of our life’s journeys and seasons, the three of us have been there for each other. Which makes our bond more special than just best friends.

The past few months, Tiff , Tina and myself have been doing our usual  group texts, phone calls, FaceTimes and a few lucky get togethers. All through this Tina had started to get sick and was continually having more symptoms and little answers to why her health was declining. Our concerns, worry and prayers for Tina were semi answered when Tina was admitted to St. Luke’s hospital on Thursday June 10th. Finally we were hoping answers could be found as to what was causing Tina’s health to rapidly decline.

 The last 12 plus days were filled with so many unknowns and so many possibilities as to what was going on. With all the uncertainties, there was definitely one we knew, Tina (Nate too) are on a long road ahead to recovery, not just physically, but emotionally and financially. Tiff and I started to wonder how does a life long friend step-in to help out especially when we can’t physically take on some of her pain, sickness, possible surgery and recovery? How can so many other’s who know Tina and want to help out but also can’t take on any of her sickness and surgeries and recovery? We help out where we can by reaching out to everyone and ask for help lifting some of the financial burden off of their plate and set-up a go fund me account for them – Hearts for Harlows.

We realize that some may know Tina from different years in her life and not all may know Tina’s journey did not just start a few months ago. So it feels important to share Tina’s back-story/heart warrior survivor first.

In October of 2006, Tina had met with a new doctor who she believes came into her life for a reason. During this routine exam, the new doctor heard something different in Tina’s heartbeat. After going through advanced testing, Tina was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect. This defect was an abnormal heart valve (a bicuspid valve). Over the years prior to her diagnosis, Tina had developed an ascending aortic aneurysm.


For the next 3 & 1/2 years, Tina would live life with many restrictions and some new routines including heart medication taken daily and visits every 6 months with her cardiologist to have tests done to make sure there were no changes in her current condition.

Everything had remained stable for those 3 & 1/2 years until it didn’t. Her aneurysm had grown to the point of rupture. Not only had it grown in it’s original location, it grew throughout her aortic root and ascending aorta. Many decisions had to be made between Tina and Nate. As a healthy 26 year old female, life had a whole different out look, risks and complications. After making a list of pros and cons, Tina and Nate decided a biological tissue valve (pig valve – pig valves on average last about 10 years before needing replacement) was her best choice.

July 23rd 2010, Tina had open-heart surgery and had the ascending aortic aneurysm taken care of and a bicuspid aortic valve replacement done. One day of recovery in ICU, things were going well for Tina and she was moved out of ICU and into her own recovery room where she was up and moving around doing some thing for herself and hoping to be able to go home in a couple of days, to finish out her recovery and healing process. While laying in bed, Tina was talking with a nurse and remembers everything going black and suddenly feeling her body jump on the bed. She had opened her eyes, felt bad chest pain and was scared. Her heart had stopped beating for about 13 seconds that jump feeling on her bed was her heart being shocked to restart.

Tina returned to ICU and met with an Electrophysiology doctor. He told Tina she might have heart block due to trauma from her surgery. After a few days of observation and being connected with temporary pacemaker, Tina’s heart was unable to return to it’s own heart rhythm.

Seven days post open-heart surgery, Tina was prepping again for surgery to have a permanent pacemaker put in. Her heart is 100% dependent on it.

Tina went home to begin several months of recovery and healing. During this time she had many restrictions to what she could do physically. She was depending on others to help her do so many everyday activities – showering, walking up and down stairs. Side effects with her vision was also part of her daily life too. Tina was put in cardiac rehab, which helped her to recover faster.

15 months post surgery; Tina was having many issues with feeling light headed and dizzy. Knowing something wasn’t right; she had extensive tests done to check her pacemaker and heart. She wore a monitor to track her pacemaker, which showed there were pauses with her heartbeat; it was skipping 3 beats in a row. The pacemaker was not working right.

November 8, 2011, Tina returned to the surgery room where the doctors found her whole pacemaker device and both leads were bad, Doctors told Tina the pacemaker and leads were so bad, it looked like she had the device in for her whole life – not 15 months. The pacemaker she had was faulty and had started to deteriorate inside of her. The doctors replaced everything and Tina had a new pacemaker with new leads in her.


Since 2011, Tina has continued to see her pacemaker doctor every 3 months and her cardiologist yearly to make sure everything is working properly. She has been extremely conscious, careful and thorough to take care of herself and her health. She has participated in walking to raise awareness for heart disease and different heart events as a proud heart survivor.


What a background story for Tina! What a warrior she is!

Back to present day and what our warrior is now currently battling and fighting and the reason for this gofundme:

Previously we mentioned that for over 2 months, Tina has been sick. In and out of doctors offices, ER, tests, x-rays, blood work and misdiagnosis. June 10th was when she was admitted to St. Luke’s. Daily she began receiving multiple procedures, CT scans, and several labs being drawn multiple times a day. Almost daily it seemed Tina’s care team was growing (a few team doctors include neurology, cardiology, infectious disease, vascular, surgeon, G.I., Electrophysiology, and stroke team) as more and more issues and results were coming to light. While it is great to know she has specialist to look over each organ in her body, it also becomes a scare as to what is really happening. As her team grew, so did the medication switch and the back-and-forth trying to figure out the right course of action.

3 days ago, tests showed that Tina has a rare blood infection that usually comes from an oral or G.I. infection unfortunately nothing has come to light as to where this bacterium originated. She has had no oral/dental work done and nothing showed up on all of her G.I. tests. This infection is so rare that her infectious disease doctor, who has worked at St Lukes for four years, hadn't worked on a case this rare while working there. The blood infection has caused endocarditis of her aortic heart valve, aneurysm graft and pacemaker. It caused septic emboli throughout her body and attached to her organs and brain. Doctors found an aneurysm in her brain and possible osteomyelitis in her spine; it also infected her left kidney and spleen, causing enlargement, tissue death as well as blood clots.

She is on strong antibiotics and blood thinners (nightly injection in her belly) to fight all of this and will continue to be on them for 6-12 weeks. While trying to decide when to schedule open-heart surgery, Tina’s stroke team wanted to first make sure the hematoma (bleed) in her brain that showed up on one of her CT scans was not changing and wouldn’t be affected during surgery as she will be on a high amount of blood thinners.

Tuesday June 22nd Tina had to get a diagnostic cerebral angiogram of her head and neck to help decide about surgery. During this procedure as they where looking for the bleed, which is located in the back of her brain, they found that Tina does have a small brain aneurysm in the front of her head above her eyes. Doctors said it would be more dangerous to do anything with it right now and to just watch it at this time since it is small. She will have it checked again in 6 months by her neurologist. Reviewing what was seen during this procedure, the team met and discussed that what was seen in the bleed was something to not be fully concerned about and that they can’t wait much longer because her heart valve and pacemaker need to come out soon and so they will be moving forward with surgery. This all has been a balancing act and a lot of weighing the risks and benefits for the team of doctors. Tina is comfortable and has confidence with each member of her care team.

Thursday June 24th at 5:30a.m., Tina will be having open-heart surgery to replace her heart valve and pacemaker that are infected. If all goes well she will be at St. Lukes for a week post surgery and will then head home to finish out her recovery. While this surgery is important, it is just the beginning for Tina. She has a host of issues that will be there for her to deal with after surgery. She will be sent home with a pic line to receive her antibiotics to continue to fight off the blood infection and will also have a lot of home care to treat her blood infection. Tina will be off of work for sometime to recover and this money will be used to help cover medical bills along with any daily bills they already have.


Tina and Nate are heading into this with some experience and expectation due to her first open-heart surgery, but there is always the unknown. We ask that you please keep them both and both of their families in your daily thoughts and prayers.

Tina is a warrior, she has survived so much already and we’d like to leave what Tina put on her FaceBook page the other day:

“I am a fighter and I will survive this once again. Please keep my family and me in your thoughts and prayers as I have a long road of recovery ahead.”