This is
#MyHeartStory
Laurie Van Brunt,
Soma President
I was born a seemingly normal baby in a small town in South Dakota. Within a few months, however, I grew lethargic and was not progressing to crawl. My mom took me to our local doctor who said it was just developmental, but as time went on, I got worse. She then took me to other doctors and LUCKILY, one of the them thought he heard something wrong with my heart. He arranged for us to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
There, my surgeon diagnosed me with a Ventricular Septal Defect, meaning I had a hole between my ventricles, as well as a collapsed lung from the stress of my lungs working overtime. I needed open heart surgery combined with a mechanical lung, both of which were in the early research stages and hadn’t been perfected on adults, let alone a baby. My mom and I stayed at the Mayo Clinic in ICU for 6 months until the research progressed.
Despite it still being so risky, I successfully had the surgery and have never had a problem with my heart since. I am still healthy over 50 years later. I owe my life to those who believed in the mission of the AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION. They invested in the research that gave my surgeon and my parents the courage to go against the odds and save my life. Had I been born just a few months earlier, I would not have survived.
Today, open heart surgery has an extremely high success rate and research has enabled successful heart transplants! However, despite the progress, heart disease still affects many people.
I was one of the 36,000 babies born annually with a heart defect. So, when you hear that statistic, think of me at 13 months old. There is a face to every one of those statistics. I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend. And, a SURVIVOR. I'm also a member of the Go Red for Women movement. I hope you all will join me in giving to this important cause because everything we do fuels the mission and it gives those small and large town doctors the science, tools and practices to go against the odds and save a life just like mine. With your help we can TOUCH A HEART.