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After giving birth to their first child, Naiya Atkins and Tristan Griffith began to settle into a routine. Naiyah was on leave from her job as a second grade teacher and was home with baby Joseph, whom she named Jojo. Tristan worked late into the night and took care of Jojo at night.
When JoJo was two weeks old, Naiya stood up while cuddling JoJo in bed and almost passed out. The 37-year-old said she believed her dizziness was due to postpartum preeclampsia, a high blood pressure that some women experience after giving birth.
Naiya took her blood pressure. It was expensive, but not dramatic. She sat down to see if her feelings would go away. That wasn’t the case. Naiya felt hot and then she felt cold. She called out to her mother, Betty Atkins-Carter, who was helping take care of JoJo.
Naiya then fainted.
Betty called 911, then Tristan. He was on his way back to New Jersey after finishing his job at a nursing home in New York City. When Tristan heard the news, he quickly got off the bus and ran the last five blocks home.
Naiyah was conscious when paramedics arrived. They took her to her hospital where she gave birth. She Naiya was also born there.
“You’ve had a heart attack,” the ER doctor told her.
The cause was caused by a so-called spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD). Unlike a traditional heart attack, where a blood clot prevents blood from reaching the heart muscle, SCAD blocks blood flow by detaching or tearing the lining of the coronary artery wall.
She underwent treatment to repair the damage and recovered in the ICU.
An hour later, Tristan was in bed holding his wife’s hand.
“I’m going to try to sleep,” Naiya said.
She squeezed his hand and her body began to tremble. An alarm sounded. Nurses rushed into the room. Tristan stepped back. Betty was there too, and she yelled in a panic, “Naya!”
Naiya’s heart had stopped beating. She was in cardiac arrest.
Nurses began CPR and then administered an electric shock to Naiya with a defibrillator. Her heart started beating again.
“What’s going on?” Naiya said, looking around the room. “Why is everyone here?”
Doctors placed a balloon pump in her chest and gave her intravenous drugs to help her heart pump blood more efficiently. She underwent cardiac rehabilitation to regain her strength.
The medication she had to take made it impossible for her to breastfeed. She missed her bond with Jojo. She even missed seeing him.
“I’m a new mom,” she kept telling the doctors. Her pleas worked, and Tristan and Betty were allowed to take JoJo twice during Naiya’s recovery.
Two weeks later, Naiya returned home wearing a defibrillator vest that would shock her heart if it stopped beating again. Her doctors considered implanting a defibrillator, but held off on her transplant in hopes that her heart would heal.
Five months later, her heart was still struggling to pump blood. Naiya had a defibrillator implanted in her chest. A month later, around the start of her new school year, she felt better and decided to return to her job.
She was excited to get her classroom ready and meet her new students. Just before school started, she had a routine blood test. On her third day of school, as she was sitting in her classroom waiting for her students to come home from their daily elective class, she got a call from her doctor.
“Your organs are failing,” he told her. “Please come to the hospital immediately.”
Naiya’s heart was functioning at just 15% capacity. She needed a heart transplant.
After further tests, Naiya was sent home on IV medication to keep her heart stable. In November, her doctor gave her a choice. She will either stay at home with her IV or go back to the hospital so she can be placed high on her transplant list.
Naiya spent Thanksgiving with her family and then returned to the hospital. The thought of missing out on her first Christmas with her Jojo almost made her cry. She thought about the big picture and thought that if she missed this she would end up spending even more time with him.
In Naiya’s hospital room, Betty had hung a wreath made of Jojo’s drawings. Her friends and nurses at the hospital gave Naiya a mini Christmas tree and lights. At Christmas, she posed for a photo with a nurse dressed as the Grinch.
Naiya’s doctor came to see her every few days in December.
“Naiyah, I’m going to find your heart this week,” he said every time.
“Okay,” she replied. “I’ll be waiting.”
Less than a week into the new year, I received a call from my doctor. “Naiya, I found your heart.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks. The next day she received the transplant.
After three weeks of physical therapy and nearly a year after the heart attack, Naiyah returned home to Jojo the day before her first birthday.
She and Tristan sang “Happy Birthday” and shared cupcakes. Since her return home, Naiya has been spending happy days bonding with her baby. One day, she took him to the store and they made stuffed animals together.
She is undergoing regular blood tests to ensure her body does not reject the new heart. Her first five tests showed no problems, but the latest tests suggested her body might be starting to reject her heart. Doctors at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center gave her more steroids to prevent that from happening.
“I’m still on the journey,” Naiya said. “But I’m fine. I think differently now. I know not everything will go as planned, but I’m looking forward to getting back to work and getting back to normal life.”
Stories from the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers, and supporters.
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