Hi, I just want to preface this by saying thank you from the bottom of my heart to anyone who is able to donate!! My name is Abbey, and I am trying to raise money for my parents to help them cover their medical expenses. On March 1st my mom began feeling ill- nausea, vomiting, chest and back pain. Unfortunately, she did not think much of the chest and back pain as she was working outside the day before, and thought she was just having soreness from that. She also had a stress test come back clear the day before, so she really did not think too much of the chest and back pain. That was until she woke up in the middle of the night on Friday March 3rd unable to breathe. My dad took her to the ER where they learned my mom had a heart attack, and on top of that she also had a leaky valve, a chest infection, another clot in her heart unrelated to the heart attack, and was going to need emergency bypass surgery. She was taken by ambulance to Iowa City where they performaned numerous tests and scans. Unfortunately, it was determined that the tissue in the area affected by her heart attack was already dead, and that there was no longer any reason to perform a bypass surgery. They gave her diuretics while in the hospital to get rid of the excess built up fluid around her lungs to help her breathe, gave her heparin to help dissolve the other clot, and perscribed numerous medications to both help strengthen her heart to help compensate for the dead tissue, and to strengthen her leaky valve.

On March 9th she was discharged from Iowa City and allowed to go back home. She quickly became miserable at home though, as the fluid began building back up in her chest making her unable to breathe. My dad took her back to the Illini ER on Sunday, March 12th where she was taken by ambulance to Trinity in Rock Island. She was admitted here and a miscommunication between staff had us believing for a night that she had a second heart attack. Luckily, this was not the case, and they told us that her heart was just struggling a bit trying to figure out how to compensate now with the lost tissue. They gave her more diuretics to drain the excess fluid, and on March 14th they discharged her and allowed her to go home.

Like the first time, she very quickly became miserable and unable to breathe at home, and on Thursday March 16th my dad took her back to the Trinity ER. She was again admitted and given more diuretics. The diuretics would help her feel better, but whenever they tried to stop the diuretics she would quickly become unable to breathe again. After a few days of this, the doctors decided to schedule her for a TEE test on Friday March 24th, as this test would allow them to take a closer look at her leaky valve. They were concerned that the medications she was given may not be helping her leaky valve, and they fear her valve may have gotten worse with how much fluid she kept building up.

Unfortunately, the day before she was scheduled to have her TEE test she began to feel ill and unable to breathe, and this kept progressively getting worse into the next day. The doctors decided to postpone her TEE test as they did not think she was stable enough to have it done. Shortly after postponing her test they decided to move her back into the ICU, and very quickly after that decided to airlift her out to OSF in Peoria due to how quickly she was declining. They worked very hard in Peoria over the next few days getting her numbers stablilized. They also noticed that her platelet count was dropping, and suspected that she may have an allergy to the heparin that she had been on since having her heart attack. They ran a test which came back postivie for a heparin allergy, so they switched her to a different blood thinner, and her platelet count began rising again. After getting her a bit more stabilized, they were fianlly able to perform her TEE test on Thursday March 30th.

The results from this test determined that her mitral valve was beyond repair, and due to how young she is her best bet would be to have a mechanical mitral valve replacement, and she was scheduled to have open heart surgery on Monday April 3rd. The weekend leading up to surgery they ran a follow up test to make sure she actually has a heparin allergy, and the second test came back negative. Due to this the doctors decided to put her back on heparin, as this is the preferred blood thinner to be on for heart surgery. Just as we feared her platelet count began to drop again after that. She was given a platelet transfusion over that weekend but that still was not quite enough. The minimum platelet count you can have and still safely have surgery is 100,000 and my mom only had 47,000. Due to this they had to postpone my moms surgery from Monday April 3rd to Wendesday April 5th. They took her back off of the heparin and ran a third test which, unshockingly, came back positive for a heparin allergy. She was given another platelet transfusion on Tuesday night, and was taken back for surgery first thing Wednesday morning.

The surgeon told us that surgery went great. He was able to complete the mechanical valve replacement, a small bypass to that area, and a second valve was also starting to leak and he was able to place ring around this valve to tighten it up and stop it from leaking. He said due to the pressure built up around her lungs he decided to place her on an ECMO machine. This machine takes the blood from her body, oxygenates it, and then delivers it back to her body. We were told that under normal conditions after surgery that after the first day the breathing tube gets removed and they start trying to ambulate the patient, and people are usually able to get discharged about 5 days later. I am creating this gofundme on April 12th, so we are officially one week post op, and not only has my mom not been discharged yet, but she still has yet to get her breathing tube removed. To say she's miserable is an understatement.

Naturally, she did not react the way most people do after surgery, and they have had to work very very slowly at getting all of this excess fluid off. She's lost over 30lbs of fluid, so it is coming off slowly but surely! They have also been slow to remvoe her ventilator as her xrays have been showing a fuzziness on her right lung, which they suspect to be a mucus plug. As of this morning the fuzziness was still there, but it is getting slightly better. They were able to shut off the ECMO machine yesterday April 11th, and are planning to fully remove the machine this afternoon. Then tomorrow is when they plan to start weaning her off of the ventilator to see how her lungs respond, and if all goes well she will finally be able to get the breathing tube out. Yesterday they also had to give her a blood transfusion due to the blood loss around one of the cannulas of the ECMO machine, and they began her on antibiotics due to a rise in her white blood cell count. It has been a very long process, but she is slowly but surely making progress.

The silver lining through all of this is that the doctors determined her heart has only lost about 10% of its performance, so once she is finally healed she should be back in a place of health. My momma is only 52 years old, so she definitely still has a lot of life left to live. Shes a mom of three, dog mom of three, and a grandma of four. She ran an in home daycare for years, and was about to start a new reception job when she had her heart attack. My dad has had to take a lot of unpaid leave during these last 6 weeks, and I can garuantee he will have to take more. I am trying to raise whatever I can to help make things easier during this time. Between the 6 weeks of hospital stays, two ambulance rides, a helicoptor ride, more tests and procedures than i can count, two platelet transfusions, a blood tranfusion, open heart surgery, etc. my parents are very anxious to learn what the final bill is going to look like. Thank you so so much to anyone that is kind enough to donate; my family appreciates it more than we can even begin to explain!! <3