Marina Jones was suddenly informed that she was in heart failure after being told she was being “dramatic” all her life. Jones was 16 when she was diagnosed with a condition that hindered her ability to lead her life normally. Read more to know how getting diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension led her to have heart failure.
Marina recalls always having the realization that something was wrong with her body. The struggles started when she was only 7 years old. She struggled to keep up with her classmates during gymnastics class while they did laps.
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Her concerns were dismissed when she informed her gym teacher that she was feeling dizzy and out of breath. According to Jones, her teacher brought it to another teacher, and the two laughed it off. “They said, ‘Even people with heart problems can run laps — you’re being dramatic,’” Marina recalls.
When she tried to tell her daily about the same they simply advised her to “exercise more.” When she turned 15, matters got worse. Jones started experiencing debilitating migraines. When she raised a concern about the same, doctors asked her to eat better and blamed the symptoms on low iron.
“I isolated myself… I didn’t know what was wrong. I just knew something was,” Mariana recalls. Everything changed when she decided to visit her sister’s college in Georgia. Mariana, her mother, her younger sister, and her boyfriend were roaming around the campus on foot.
This is when the group came across a steep hill that Jones was hesitant to climb, given her troubled health. “Everyone was telling me to hurry up, and then… I don’t really remember what happened. I just woke up on the sidewalk. I had completely passed out,” Mariana recalled in a conversation with People.
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When Jones woke up, she felt her heart racing. Her mother immediately called up Mariana’s primary care doctor to inform them about what had happened. The family doctor ordered an X-ray to understand what was going on.
Mariana’s X-ray results showed that her heart had doubled in size, which was a result of the heart struggling to pump oxygen for years. A few days after the results came out, she was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension.
Mayo Clinic describes the condition as “a type of high blood pressure that affects the arteries in the lungs and the right side of the heart.” The condition can lead to an individual’s heart going into failure.
“The first thing I saw was: ‘Life expectancy: five years after diagnosis.’ And I was 16,” she recalls. When she was 22, things started taking a turn for the worse. Mariana, who was attending an esthetician school, started experiencing severe symptoms. She found it extremely difficult to even walk from her car to the class.
During her routine heart checkup, she was told that she was suffering a heart failure. The doctor told her situation was extremely “serious” and that she would need a lung transplant. “I realized if I didn’t say yes, I could die,” Mariana shared.
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Soon after, she went into surgery that would give her new lungs. Mariana underwent an eight-hour double lung transplant. She remembers waking up from the surgery and feeling excruciating pain.
Now, having survived the health scare and undergone the surgery, Mariana noted how good life is. “There have been hard moments. I still have restrictions. I still go to the doctor. But life is so good now,” she adds.
