Careese Pfund Heart For Careese

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting. My www.fundcareeseanewheart.org website will be open in a few days. Please be patient. 

I have two dogs, a beautiful house, a great job, and a husband I couldn’t love any more all at the age of 25.  Until a couple of weeks ago, I felt like my life couldn’t be any better.  I’m the kind of person that eats right, works out, and stays healthy, until I wasn’t.  I had been feeling what I thought was an extreme case of asthma for the past 6-8 months, which was a reasonable assumption since I’ve been dealing with asthma my entire life.  But this was different, I couldn’t quite stay on top of it and manage it, and I was becoming more easily fatigued each week.  On Friday, January 6th, I flew into Tucson to meet my husband, Michael, for his cousin’s wedding.  I had been feeling nauseous and ill for a couple of days, but ignored it, because normally these things just go away with time.  The next day I went to the wedding and continued to worsen, my upper abdominal pain and nausea caused me to leave the reception early.  Sunday my mom came to pick me up to take me to the airport, but as soon as she saw me she knew I couldn’t get on a plane, canceled my flight and rushed me to the hospital.  I thought I was possibly going in to get my gallbladder removed. I wasn’t expecting them to say that I was in multiple organ failure, with fluid on my lungs, all due to the fact that I was in the “end stage of heart failure”. I could barely comprehend what they were telling me, I still have a hard time.  Several intravenous lines, echocardiograms, heart catherizations and central lines later, here I am, still in shock. I can only take everything one day at a time, or that’s what people keep telling me.  Honestly, I feel like I can only take things hour by hour, looking any further past that makes this whole situation seem like it is impossible to get through.  One problem at a time, one procedure at a time, one decision at a time. I pray I wake up from this life that can’t really be mine now, I pray for a new heart, I pray for a healthy life, and I pray for the people taking care of me, because they have the more difficult job.

Thank you, Careese