Background

Heart failure limited my life incredibly. I couldn’t participate in the kids’ lives anymore. I just spent my time sleeping because it’s all I had any energy to do.

I started to feel better, a little bit, once they got me on medications, but then eventually I felt like I was kinda going backward, and backward, and backward. I believe my ejection fraction started around 45% and, eventually, slid back to about 18% over time.

When I realized that the symptoms were getting worse again, um, it was very, um, it was very depressing. I had a new baby. I still had two children who needed me actively there. And seeing me distance myself further and further from their lives was very painful emotionally. Basically, physically, I just … I felt like crud. I really just felt bad.

My cardiologist gave me the option, basically, for a heart transplant. I had been maxed out on medications at that point. My body couldn’t take ’em anymore, so the transplant was my only viable option.

I was taking an obscene amount of medications, and they helped on the one hand, but then I ended up suffering from a lot of side effects from those same medications, which caused me to have other issues.

Ultimately, I tried CCM therapy because it seemed like a no-brainer. I had a very invasive option of a heart transplant, or LVAD was the second option, um, or I could get this little device that would fix the problem in the long term without me being on a lifetime of medications and without the increased risk of cancer and all the other things that come along with a heart transplant. It wasn’t an option for me at that point. It was just, “Let’s do this, and how soon can we do it?”

CCM therapy has given me my life back. I can’t even call it an impact. It’s literally given me my life back. I never thought I would see the day where I would be back to where I am right now, where I can actually participate in life with my family. It was a very bleak outlook initially, so it’s been a miracle for us.

What I like the most about CCM therapy is that I mean my life just goes on from here. I don’t have the long-term effects that I was facing with a heart transplant. Now I just move on with my life.