She had heart failure, meaning that her heart wasn’t pumping enough blood to meet her body’s needs — working at a tiny fraction of normal capacity when she was first hospitalized at 27 years old.
Although she’s since gone through two transplants, now the 42-year-old is worried that all those years of having a “sloppy and inefficient pump” in her chest have affected her brain.
They already have in dramatic fashion — twice. Blood clots in her heart moved to her brain, causing two strokes that temporarily left her unable to use her right arm.
But she suspects more subtle changes, too.
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| Jillianne Code with her husband. Code has had two heart transplants and worries about cognitive decline. |
She has difficulty with concentration, forgets things and has to search for words at times, she said. “Yesterday I had to search for an hour to find my house keys, for example,” Code said. “And they were sitting on the table.”
As an assistant professor of education at the University of British Columbia, she worries about her ability to solve problems and handle complex conversations in graduate seminars.
Source: Global News Canada
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