Hopefully, many of you remember my blog post back in December when I asked for prayers for an old college friend, Megan. Back in December Megan was experiencing some shortness of breath and weakness. This was a major concern for Megan and her family because in 2002 she was diagnosed with Myocarditis: a virus that attacks the heart and causes heart failure. On November 30, 2009, she received a diagnosis of congestive heart failure with a heart ejection fraction of 15-20. A healthy heart is a heart ejection fraction of 50 and anything below 36 is considered serious.
After several days in the hospital, the doctors made the decision to try and strengthen Megan’s heart with medications before resorting to a heart transplant. As a safety measure, they put in a defibrillator to shock the heart if needed, and Megan went home on December 11th.
The month of January was a bit of a struggle for Megan. She experienced a significant amount of nausea and was unable to keep food down. After adjusting some medicaitions, she started to feel better – temporarily. When the nausea set in again, she started losing a lot of weight. On January 26th, she was admitted back into Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. Tests showed that her veins and liver were full of fluids, and her heart ejection fraction was down to an 8. She is now in major congestive heart failure and must be on continuous IV meds. Yesterday, she had a heart cath and is now been placed on the heart transplant list.
TRANSPLANT LIST (explanation)
Barnes is the only heart transplant hospital in the Mid-America area. Dr. Ewald, Megan’s doctor, is the head physician of the transplant team and decides who gets what heart. Beside the obvious of a perfect match, there are other criteria that determine who is at the top of the list. They are:
1A – Patients on continuous IV meds and in the heart cath lab
1B – Patients on continuous IV meds
2 – All others
Other factors in every patient are age, health other than the heart, size, and blood type.
Megan has been placed on the 1B transplant list. Their entire family is dedicating this to the Lord, and her father, Wayne (where I got all of the above information) said, “The wait for a heart could be days or months. It will happen in God’s time.” I have recently been reminded of the same truth. Life doesn’t happen when I want it to happen, life happens when God wants it to happen. HE is in control.
In honor of Megan, I’d like to inform/remind everyone that THIS Friday, is the American Heart Association’s “National Wear Red” day. So…. “Go Red with your wardrobe! Whether it’s a red dress or a red T-shirt, show the world you support Go Red For Women, the American Heart Association’s movement to help save lives.”
