New Heart 4 Chels

We are raising money to help offset the enormous medical expenses that our 33-year-old best friend Chelsey is facing.

The average cost of a heart transplant in the United States is $1.4M.

CHELSEY’S STORY

Until this past summer, Chelsey had been living a typical life in Ohio with her fiancé Jim and golden retriever Moe. Toward the middle of the summer, she caught what appeared to be a head cold consisting of a persistent cough, which she (as any 33-year-old would) didn’t think too much of. The cough lingered, and by summer’s end was accompanied by nausea, fatigue, and an inability to keep food or water down for days at a time. A trip to the local clinic diagnosed the symptoms as pneumonia, and Chelsey was sent home with the standard treatment of antibiotics to kill the infection.

Chelsey diligently took her medication, some time off from work to help her recover, and experienced some good days without coughing so much. However, one night shortly after finishing the antibiotics, she became severely out of breath. She could barely walk across her 3 ft wide hallway from the bedroom to the bathroom. Her right leg was badly swollen. She couldn’t stop coughing, and with guidance from her fiancé, they made the trip to the Emergency Room. Once at the hospital, scans showed numerous blood clots in her right lung, and one large clot near her heart, in addition to low blood pressure and low heart function. It was becoming clearer that the original symptoms were mis-diagnosed and Chelsey was actually experiencing congestive heart failure.

Through a weekend long hospital stay, numerous tests were run, and medications experimented with. The cause for the clots and diminished heart function were a mystery. What was certain was that Chelsey could not leave the hospital without a LifeVest (a wearable defibrillator for people at risk of sudden cardiac arrest, or simply put - death.) She would also need to have a filter placed in her main vein to stop clots from going to her heart. After the procedure and getting fitted for a LifeVest (which her insurance maintains is unnecessary), she went back home and began the myriad of doctors’ appointments to determine the best treatment. She was instructed to wear the vest 24 hours a day for the next 3 months. She also had to give herself daily injections to prevent further clots and allow her body to dissolve the existing ones.

BACK TO THE HOSPITAL

Upon her return home, Chesley settled into a routine, battled with disability and insurance, and appeared to be feeling better. That was until she once again suffered shortness of breath and vomiting that landed her back in the hospital 2 weeks after being discharged. The culprit was determined to be a last-minute reshuffling of her medication before leaving the hospital the first time. With doctors now aligned on the best cocktail of prescriptions, Chelsey was discharged, still battling with insurance over her LifeVest. She was told that she would have no choice but to remain out of work until she no longer required the vest, she could not travel by plane for at least a year, and she could not spend more than 2 hours in a car for fear of forming more potentially deadly clots. This was devastating news considering a majority of Chelsey’s close friends and family live 10 or more hours away.

The next month held fairly stable days, minus the occasional vomiting and fatigue, and still being out of work. It wasn’t until mid October 2023 that we got the call that the heavily contested LifeVest thankfully served it’s purpose, and that Chelsey was back in the hospital following a cardiac arrest. Her heart had suddenly stopped, was zapped back into rhythm, and it was time to bring in the specialists to figure out the next steps.

THE HELICOPTER FLIGHT

Within a few hours of her being at the hospital for the third time in a month and a half, the decision was made to transfer Chelsey to Cleveland University Hospitals. A helicopter Med-Flight was the only possible option as the local hospital was not equipped with a cardiac ambulance. Chelsey made the hour-long flight in the middle of the night, and within an hour of being in the Cleveland hospital her heart stopped a second time. This time she was given chest compressions for two minutes before being shocked again. A catheter was placed to her heart. The root cause for her attacks (which is now identified as Torsades de Pointes, an uncommon and life-threatening type of ventricular tachycardia,) is still unknown. After her third cardiac arrest the following day she was moved into the Heart Failure ICU, which is her current residence. While her clots have resolved themselves, Chelsey’s heart is still functioning at less than a third of a normal efficiency. While she is currently stable through the use of even more medications, her heart continues to go out of rhythm and there is no chance of its function ever recovering.

TRANSPLANT LIST

Chelsey’s only option for living a life outside of the hospital is to have a heart transplant. She was officially placed on the transplant list within a week of being admitted to the Cleveland Hospital and is praying that a donor will become available soon. Despite knowing that the wait can be on the order of months in the Heart Failure ICU, connected to tubes, catheters, IVs, and potentially an ECMO machine (a machine that pumps and oxygenates a patient's blood outside the body, allowing the heart and lungs to rest) she is staying positive and determined.

DONATIONS

I know most of you may not know Chelsey like we do. She is a self-less, fun-loving, and talented woman who has the ability to make friends easily. She is an amazing waterski-show skier, snowboarder, the best mom to her fur-baby Moe, and is gifted with children. The thought of her never meeting her two nephews (both now 2 months old), never getting to wear her stunning wedding dress, and never having kids of her own is too heart breaking to think about. Chelsey is loyal to her extended family (her parents both passed away during the pandemic), as well as the friends she calls family. The only thing we can do for her is to be positive, send her our best wishes, and begin this fundraiser to try and help with her medical debt. The LifeVest itself costs $2,500 a month without insurance, as does the anti-rejection medication she will have to take following a transplant. As stated above, the cost of a heart transplant is over $1,000,000, about 50% of which will likely be covered by insurance. To date, her hospital stays, medicines, and medical flight totals around $90,000.

Please, we are asking for help from you all. If you can donate, your support is sincerely appreciated. If you are not in a financial position to donate, please send along well wishes, good vibes to Chels and pray that a heart becomes available soon. Any donations that are over the required amount to offset expenses will be donated to the American Heart Association. Thank you for reading!

With Love,

Sarah, Jason, Jim, Alex, Brittany, Ivan, Clare and Jill