Aryana Jacobs of Washington, D.C., developed life-threatening high blood pressure after her baby was born. “I wish every new mother was sent home with a box of chocolates and a blood pressure cuff,” she said.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times
By Roni Caryn Rabin, The New York Times, May 28, 2023
Sherri Willis-Prater’s baby boy was 2 months old, and she was about to return to her job at a school cafeteria in Chicago. But as she walked up the short flight of stairs to her kitchen one evening, she nearly collapsed, gasping for breath.
At the hospital, Ms. Willis-Prater, who was 42 at the time, was connected to a ventilator that pumped air into her lungs. Her heart, doctors said, was operating at less than 20 percent of its capacity. She had developed a rare form of heart failure that emerges after pregnancy.
The diagnosis was the last thing she expected to hear. After giving birth, Ms. Willis-Prater thought “I made it across the finish line,” she recalled in an interview. “I don’t have to worry about anything anymore.”
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