KITCHENER, Ont. Tucked into an ordinary backpack is a battery-powered device that’s keeping Andrea Clegg alive.
It helps her failing heart pump blood while the 26-year-old Cambridge, Ont., woman waits for a heart transplant.
Despite the dire state of her heart — and the desperate need for a new one — Clegg is feeling remarkably well since surgeons hooked her up to the device last fall.
“I’m much better than even before I was diagnosed,” Clegg said. “They keep reminding me I’m still sick.”
Her spirits are high considering it’s uncertain how long she’ll have to wait for a heart transplant.
“I’m battery-powered,” joked Clegg, the vital device sitting on her lap.
It’s almost a relief to know what’s wrong with her heart and what needs to be done after feeling unwell for so long with few answers.
Clegg was first diagnosed in spring 2008 after going to the hospital because her heart was racing and she had strange symptoms for a while.
Tests showed she had dilated cardiomyopathy, meaning her heart was enlarged and weakened.
A few months later, she was given an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, which would shock her heart if its beating became irregular and life-threatening.
Clegg’s heart was barely functioning and she didn’t feel well. She figured she would cope by adjusting her lifestyle.
She left her job as a civil engineer and threw herself into planning her May 30 wedding to Shaun Clegg.
As the event approached last spring, Clegg was feeling pretty good. She thought about returning to work and driving again.
Those expectations changed dramatically on her wedding day. Minutes into her speech at the reception, Clegg felt a sudden jolt from her implanted defibrillator.
“At first I didn’t know what it was,” Clegg said.
Then it shocked her twice more. Panic among the reception guests turned to silence as she collapsed.
Her new husband held her hand until firefighters and paramedics arrived to take her to St. Mary’s General Hospital, home to the Regional Cardiac Care Centre.
“I told them I didn’t want to leave, but my heart was not good,” Clegg said.
At St. Mary’s, she swapped her pouffy wedding dress for a drab hospital gown. Eager to salvage the celebration, nurses surprised the newlyweds with roses, a cake and non-alcoholic sparkling wine to share with family gathered around Clegg’s hospital bed.
“We got to make a toast and cut the cake and I threw a rose to the single nurses,” she said.
Clegg made it through yet another health crisis, and once again returned home to cope with her illness as best she could.
But the trouble with her heart worsened.
In the summer, she begin experiencing abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting — first thought by doctors to be a gastrointestinal problem. A nurse at an education class offered through St. Mary’s recognized the symptoms as the warning signs of a much bigger problem.
The prognosis was grim: severe heart failure. Clegg stayed in hospital for weeks on medication to reduce the fluid building up in her abdomen because her heart wasn’t pumping well.
Clegg had been told before about the possibility of a heart transplant; now there were no other options.
“Basically, it’s my only chance really,” Clegg said.
She was rushed to Toronto General, where her health deteriorated so quickly her lifespan was measured in minutes and hours.
“Things got really, really bad,” Clegg said.
Within days, she was wheeled into the operating room to get the life-saving device she depends on now — a left ventricular assist device.
“It’s used as a bridge to transplantation,” explained Dr. Stuart Smith, Clegg’s doctor and chief of cardiovascular services at the regional cardiac centre. “It does all the pumping for her just like her heart would.”