With a new heart, a mother of four participates in transplant games

Kristen Patton was getting ready to feed her newborn baby on Christmas Eve as her three older children went to bed.

It was the holiday she had been planning – relaxing family time the day after she returned from the hospital after the birth of her daughter, Hattie.

Suddenly, incredible pain crossed Kristen's left jaw. He moved in the shape of a web in the cheek, the left side of the neck, the chest and the arm.

"Something was really wrong," she remembered. "It was so instantaneous."

Fearing to faint, Kristen stretched Hattie into her cradle and crawled to her husband, Steve Goldsmith, who was taking gifts out of a closet. He found his wife unconscious and dialed 911.

Kristen did not breathe. Rescuers rescued her several times. She came in and out of consciousness.

At the hospital, the doctors determined that Kristen, then 40, had suffered a heart attack.

Following a catheterization procedure and several days of testing, there was no clear answer as to the reasons for the attack. Kristen was determined to return home with her husband and their children, then aged 10, 7, 5 and 8 days. But before leaving the hospital, Kristen suffered a second or even worse heart attack.

It was as if she were drowning while her chest was filled with blood. Kristen had undergone a spontaneous dissection of the coronary artery, or SCAD, a tear in the coronary artery. The doctors took her to emergency surgery and performed triple bypbad surgery.

Some studies have shown that SCAD has a higher risk in postpartum women. The risk of recurrence is high and the SCAD can be fatal.

Kristen's heart was badly damaged. In the end, she would need a heart transplant.

Over the next few weeks, Kristen has survived through the maintenance of life. Machines injected blood into her heart and body.

Clay, his eldest son, remembers being so worried.

"It was hard for me to know that my mother was going through something that would probably end with her death," he said, but his father's insurance helped him.

Clay said her father had explained what was going on "and managed to make sure that the situation did not seem as bad as it was." His father told him and his sisters that it was as if their mother had fallen asleep, had fallen off the bed and was slowly coming up.

A left ventricular badist device, or LVAD, was surgically implanted to pump blood and give Kristen a semblance of a normal life. She moved to a rehabilitation hospital and then returned home.

In addition to taking on more responsibilities with the kids, Steve changed his wife's LVAD piles and dressed his incision while continuing his work in the tech field.

"It was amazing and pretty good to see it live up to expectations," said Kristen. "I knew I had married a good guy, but I did not know anything about it."

With her LVAD, Kristen hiked with her family to the hills around their hometown of Austin, Texas. She drove her children to school and worked hard in cardiac rehabilitation to become strong enough for a possible transplant.

Despite everything, she was afflicted by the heart attack of her mother's recent death and was having trouble accepting the idea of ​​a transplant. Sometimes she wondered if she should live indefinitely with the LVAD.

Then, one night late 2016, the call arrived.

"Kristen, we have a heart for you," the voice on the phone said.

Thoughts flashed in her mind, "sweet, bitter, and dreadful," she says. She had another chance in life, but the donor family had lost a loved one.

"There are not enough words to describe what it is," she said.

Kristen spent eight days in the hospital after the transplant without complications. Then she started her new life with her new heart.

Kristen has since taken her workouts to a new level.

She helped her exercise physiologist train a small group of workouts called "Mighty Heart Fitness" for transplant patients from the heart.

At her doctor's office, she saw an advertisement for Transplant Games of America. She decided to participate and, in August 2018, she did it. She won a silver medal in 5K cycling, a bronze medal in the 20km bike race and the 200m sprint, and competed in softball and doubles tennis.

She volunteers with the American Heart Association and the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance. But his "pbadion project" is Wonders & Worries, a non-profit organization that helps children cope with a parent's deadly disease. The group helped her family and now she is giving back.

The message that Clay likes to share with other heart patients and their loved ones is: "Do not give up on guys, even if things are difficult or hopeless, miracles can happen."

The American Heart Association News covers the health of the heart and brain. All opinions expressed in this story do not reflect the official position of the American Heart Association. Copyright is the property of the American Heart Association, Inc., and all rights are reserved. If you have any questions or comments about this story, please email [email protected].