Mother's Heart Failure: A Second Chance

0:00It's April 18th. This is Dallas News Today, driven by AI. Kasey Gould chased motherhood for years, battling three miscarriages and failed infertility treatments. She and her husband called it quits in January 2024, only for her to find out a month later she was pregnant. Fast forward to November 1st, 2024. Her labor dragged on for 36 hours, but everything flipped when she felt a deep dread right. Before pushing, doctors rushed her into an emergency C-section after her birth. Her baby's heart rate tinked. Turns out, her own heart was failing heart ejection fraction at just 13 percent, way below the normal 55 to 70. Cardiologist Amher Sayyid jumped in, inserting an impella pump through her femoral artery to let her heart rest, then put her in a two-day coma on a ventilator in the ICU. Gould woke up stunned, reuniting with her healthy newborn son and husband, clueless about the cardiac crisis until Docs explained. This rare condition, peri-partum cardiomyopathy, hit without much warning.

1:03Maybe her dread came from fluid in her lungs or dropping blood pressure. Not every case needs a C-section, but hers did to avoid extra stress. Her recovery stunned everyone, ejection fraction bounced back to normal, though she'll Medicaid and C-cardiologist lifelong. Future pregnancies, off the table, too risky even after full rebound. Now her ones a happy one-year-old hitting swimming lessons and sleeping through nights, while Gould shares her story at conferences, eyes are tripped to, glacier National Park and cherishes every bike-ride-proof life's second chances hit different.