It’s been five years since a young Catholic mother suffered a massive heart attack shortly after giving birth to her sixth child, and even though she survived and is now living daily with serious heart issues, when she became pregnant again, she insisted on giving birth in spite of doctor’s concerns.

Fox News is reporting on the harrowing story of 41 year-old Jara Herron who had just given birth to a daughter on September 18, 2011 when she began to experience what felt like a heavy weight bearing down on her chest. Her left arm went numb, she vomited, let out a scream for help, and passed out.

Her husband, Jason, called 911 but it was too late.

“I died before we got out of the driveway. For almost an hour they did not have a heart beat. They don’t usually work on someone for much longer than an hour, and the EMT who helped me said, just as they were about to stop, that I’d give them a sign, like I’d wiggle my finger or something small,” Herron told Tulsa World in 2012.

She was air lifted to St. John Medical Center where doctors struggled to resuscitate her. They were successful, but she fell into a deep coma for the next 30 days.

During this time, doctors found that she had experienced a heart attack known as a SCAD – spontaneous coronary artery dissection – which disproportionately affects young women without heart disease risk factors.

Although doctors aren’t sure what causes SCAD, the condition appears to affect peripartum women, said Dr. Robert Haas, medical director at St. John Medical Center who worked on Heron’s case but did not treat her directly.

As he explained to Fox, hormonal changes during pregnancy lead to a softening of tissues around the pelvis to aid in childbirth, but sometimes, they can cause other tissues, like the coronary artery, to soften too. In some cases, the layers of these tissues can soften so much that they separate or tear from one another, and that was the case for Herron, who at the time was 39 and had no heart disease risk factors.

Her case was severe and required placing six stents in her coronary artery and implanting a heart pump to reverse organ failure. This is a very complected procedure, you can visit the site to learn more.

As if that wasn’t enough, “My kidneys shut down, and they said I had to start dialysis four times a day. Then I had respiratory distress, then I had a (gastrointestinal) bleed. That was all in the first two or three days,” she said.

Herron received the last rites twice and the family was told to prepare for the worst. There was a very good chance that this young mother would die and leave behind a husband and a house full of young children ranging in age from newborn to 12 years.

The prospect of such a devastating loss was so unbearable that even the EMT who rushed Jara to the hospital was “crying in his steering wheel,” Jason reported. “They had seen all this life in the house— they were so worried that the mother was going to die.”

“She was on death’s door,” said her doctor, Dr. Tom Kalapura, an interventional cardiologist at St. John Medical Center.

But, by the grace of God, within four weeks, she began to come back to life and was eventually able to go home – but not because she was cured.

“It’s been five years this month since that happened, and it’s been a process of living with heart failure now,” Herron told Fox.

She’s living on blood thinners, beta blockers, and diuretics in addition to a pacemaker and implantable cardioverter defibrillator which is a battery-powered device that is connected to the heart with wires. The device works in tandem with the pacemaker to keep her heart rate in check.

In May of 2012, she was able to go back to work in her beauty salon and spa located in Tulsa where she employs 35 people. Even though she scaled back her hours, her business was growing and she was able to hire several new employees. It was during this time that she learned she was pregnant again.

“I have a faith-based system where I do not use birth control, and I’ve always been very trusting in that,” said Herron.

However, given her health issues, the idea of another pregnancy had not even been discussed.

“I was 40 with six children,” she said. “[Pregnancy] wasn’t on my radar or my physicians’.”

The news scared her, and she faced criticism from friends, family and her primary physician who advised her to terminate the pregnancy.

But she wouldn’t hear of it.

Even Kalapura, who attends the same church as the Herron family, warned her of the risks, but she insisted on going through with the pregnancy.

“[Kalapura’s] response was very surprised, but he also said it was an amazing sign of how much my body had healed and recovered,” Herron said. “Mentally and emotionally I liked his take on it.”

It was a huge risk as women who experience SCAD are only advised to become pregnant again if their heart’s pumping function becomes significantly restored. And even then, the risk is still high enough that most doctors recommend avoiding pregnancy.

The first half of the pregnancy was normal, but by the third trimester, “I felt what someone experiences at end-stage heart failure,” Herron said.

“I didn’t work; I couldn’t even stand. I really believed that I would get immediate relief once I delivered the baby. Having gone through that many pregnancies, I know that feeling of immediate relief.”

Labor was induced six weeks early and she welcomed daughter Winnie on January 30, 2014. As fate would have it, she was delivered in the same room of the same hospital where Herron had nearly died several years earlier.

“It was an amazing experience coming full circle, experiencing life and death in that room,” said Heron.

Even though she will eventually need a heart transplant, her faith and family are helping her to live every moment in the present.

“I believe God gave me a grace as a child, that I have a strong sense of faith and trust, and knowing when things are out of your control and when they aren’t,” she said. “I try to enjoy this moment and not worry about the future— that’s wasted energy on my heart. I want that to reflect most importantly to my children: that how you face adversity and how you handle it is a complete reflection of your personality.”

Let us keep this brave young woman – and her family – in our prayers!

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