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the turkey than the ablation.
    But on Thanksgiving Day, Patricia couldn’t breathe. She was constantly short of breath, and it frightened her. She called the cardiologist and he suggested she go back on her medication. She did, but it didn’t help. Over the next few days, she felt so bad she couldn’t even hold baby Jack.
    In the emergency room, the doctors did an echocardiogram and X-rays. These were standard tests for diagnosing heart disorders, but it was the first time they’d been done on Patricia. After looking at the results, the surprised physician asked, “Why didn’t you tell us you felt this bad?”
    Doctors explained how the ablation had stopped her heart from racing, but the racing had actually been helping her. Now, her heart was unable to keep up with her body’s needs.
    â€œWe’re going to admit you,” the doctor said. “You have a 10 percent ejection fraction, and we can’t let you go home with that.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?” Joe asked after the doctor left.
    â€œI think it has something to do with the heart pumping,” Patricia said. She never liked learning about the heart because it reminded her of her family history. She called a friend, who looked it up.
    â€œIt has to do with the volume of blood flowing out of the heart. Normal is 60 percent to 70 percent,” her friend said.
    â€œMine’s 10 percent.”
    â€œPatricia! It says here that’s not compatible with life!”
    The cardiologist arrived. “We’re sending you up to ICU, and we’re starting you on meds, but we’re not sure what will happen next. You need to get your things in order—right now,” he said.
    Patricia had worked in a hospital long enough to know that was code for, “You don’t have long to live.”
    She was eventually diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy, a serious disorder that occurs during pregnancy, which essentiallymeant her heart muscle wasn’t contracting forcefully enough to pump blood to her vital organs. Approximately 50 percent of women with the condition spontaneously recover with medication. Another 45 percent recover, but not fully. The remainder need a pacemaker, possibly even a transplant. Patricia was in the latter category.
    In January of 2006, doctors installed an ICD that would zap her heart into rhythm whenever it started to beat erratically. Though it was meant to be used only occasionally, it was soon pacing her 100 percent of the time. Still, doctors were confident that with time her functioning would increase.

    In 2008, doctors at Mayo agreed that Patricia wasn’t going to recover as expected. It had been more than three years since the symptoms had started, and even with the pacemaker, her heart was still operating at a mere 10 percent.
    â€œYou’re going to need a transplant, but not for another five or ten years,” her doctor told her.
    Patricia wasn’t happy with the news. If a transplant was the only thing that would cure her, she didn’t want to wait ten years to get one. Constantly short of breath, she prayed, God, how sick do I have to be before I can get better?
    But things started to deteriorate quickly. By the summer of 2008, her condition had gotten considerably worse. Her cardiologist, Dr. Copeland, decided that Patricia needed to be put on the transplant list as a status two—meaning her name was on the list but at a lower priority. Dr. Copeland expected it would still be a year before she needed a new heart, but now she was on the list in case things got worse.
    And they did.
    At the beginning of September, Patricia spent most of her days lying in bed or on the couch. The boys were in daycare, and it was all she could do to pick them up from school at 4:30, feed them, and watch them until bedtime at 7:30. At best, she was a mom forthree hours a day. There was additional stress too. The economy was taking a toll on Joe’s business, and