Callie Schade's Second Open Heart Surgery

Hi, my name is Natalia and I am creating this GoFundMe to support my best friend, Callie Schade. I have known Callie since elementary school and the past year and half have been unimaginably hard for her. Shortly after Callie learned that she was pregnant with her rainbow baby, she also found out about the death of a young family member from an aortic dissection and rupture. An aortic dissection is a tear in the lining of the largest blood vessel that comes from the heart, which can subsequently lead to the vessel rupturing.

 

Due to concerns that there could be a genetic component, Callie underwent testing while pregnant and was found to have an aortic aneurysm, which is a weak spot in the large blood vessel that creates a bulge. An aortic aneurysm can progress to a dissection and rupture, which is immediately fatal in 40% of people. The risk of dying can be as high as 1-3% per hour until the patient has surgery. In fact, this is what Callie’s father died from when we were in elementary school. It is believed that he, too, carried the genetic mutation that Callie and now several of her family members are known to have.

In order to prevent her blood pressure from increasing (which can lead to aortic dissection and rupture) during the normal delivery of a baby, Callie had to undergo a C section to deliver her first child. Despite this intervention, Callie experienced an aortic dissection around 50 hours after the birth of Charlie which was not caught until just before she was discharged from the hospital. Instead of going home with her fiancé, Jordan, and their new baby, she was airlifted to Anschutz and had emergency open heart surgery that lasted for over 8 hours.

 

The tear in Callie’s aorta starts at her heart and runs down to her lower abdomen. Her doctors were able to fix a small portion of the dissection near her heart to try to keep her alive until she had healed enough to have more surgery. It has been nearly a year of healing since her first surgery, and that year has been difficult and full of cardiac rehab, doctor and ER visits, scans every few weeks, and learning to care for her son while going back to work. During this time, she has seen 2 family members have open heart surgery to reinforce their aortic aneurysms to try to prevent what happened to Callie. One of these family members is her sister, Courtney, who many of you were also kind enough to help. Callie has also learned that the only son she will be able to have carries the same genetic mutation she has.


Unfortunately, Callie's symptoms have worsened and she has to have a second open heart surgery to try to repair another portion of her aorta to prevent rupture. In addition to repairing a critical area of her aorta, her surgeons plan to replace one of her heart valves that was also damaged. This surgery will also take over 8 hours and she will be on a cardiopulmonary bypass machine and have chest tubes inserted, like last time. It is also likely that she will need further surgery in the future.

Callie’s first hospital stay and subsequent medical bills have cost nearly $930,000. A portion of her initial $10,000 out-of-pocket insurance costs were covered by the fundraiser that was started for her by Brice Stewart last year. Please help me take some of the financial burden off Callie, her fiancé, and their one-year old son. She will be having surgery on 4/6 and I will be flying out shortly afterwards and will provide updates to this page. Thank you in advance for your generosity and support last year and this year.