Doctors’ teamwork saves pregnant patient, baby | News

PADUCAH — A Graves County woman is now in recovery, and doctors say she is lucky to be alive after she arrived at Baptist Health Paducah in September with heart attack symptoms and required emergency heart surgery, along with an emergency cesarean section at 32 weeks pregnant to deliver her baby.

Sierra Garrett and her fiancé, Justin Cotton, credit the team of Baptist Health Paducah medical professionals for Garrett being here today, and for the delivery and treatment of their now 5-month-old daughter, Piper Cotton.

It started out as a normal day for Garrett, she recalled. She was home with her son Ezra Cotton, 4, while her fiancé was at work just down the road. On the day of what became her heart emergency — and daughter’s birthday — Garrett was exactly 32 weeks along.

“I just felt really off the whole morning. And then, my stomach got upset. I called [Justin] and told him I didn’t feel good. And then I threw up everywhere. My whole chest started burning. It was just unbearable. I knew I had to go to the hospital,” Garrett said.

She called Justin and told him she felt like she was having a heart attack, and he rushed home from work to take her to the nearest hospital.

After arriving at a Mayfield hospital and reporting symptoms of a heart attack, Garrett was transferred via ambulance to Baptist Health Paducah for further treatment. The last thing she remembers from that day was being in the ambulance shortly before it arrived in Paducah.

Dr. Stephen Frossard, a Baptist Health Paducah cardiologist, met Garrett upon her arrival at the hospital. Tests revealed Garrett had suffered from spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD), an emergency condition where a tear forms in a blood vessel in the heart. SCAD more commonly affects women, and Frossard said patients with SCAD often do not have factors that would typically put them at a higher risk of a heart attack. While doctors cannot be certain what caused Garrett’s SCAD, Frossard said her pregnancy most likely contributed.

At first, Frossard attempted to place a stent to repair the dissection, but soon realized Garrett would require open-heart surgery.

That is where Dr. Austin Ward, a Baptist Health Paducah cardiothoracic surgeon, and Dr. Susan Mueller, an independent obstetrician and gynecologist with an office at Baptist Health Paducah, came into the picture. In addition to Garrett’s need for surgery to repair her heart, doctors assessed the baby would need to be delivered via an emergency C-section.

Normally, the cardiology, cardiothoracic and obstetric teams do not work together in the same spaces on the same patients — in fact, Frossard said this was his first time at Baptist Health Paducah that he met Mueller. In the operating room, Mueller delivered Garrett and Cotton’s baby, Piper, who was then transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit, where she stayed for 35 days. Then, Ward went to work to repair the damage done to Garrett’s heart.

“I think our case is a perfect example of how teamwork comes together to make a good outcome,” Ward said.

Piper is also the first baby delivered in Ward’s heart surgery operating room, he added.

SCAD is a rarity for doctors to come across, with Frossard and Ward each seeing only a handful of cases over their whole careers.

Garrett remained in the hospital for 34 days, during which she was in a coma for nearly two weeks, and was on a ventilator three separate times before having a breathing tube placed. Cotton was running in between his daughter’s room and his fiancée’s room, and had to return home at times to care for his son Ezra. Garrett met her daughter for the first time when Piper was 10 days old, having been wheeled in her hospital bed to see her daughter in the NICU.

The story of the mother recovering from SCAD and open-heart surgery and her daughter in the NICU inspired many staff members at Baptist Health Paducah. ICU nurses even got together to send Christmas gifts to Garrett, Piper and the family, including a headband for Piper that read “Sierra Strong.”

Now, Garrett is working through various physical therapy treatments. Her doctors said she should expect to live a near-normal life, but will continue to monitor her and her heart for several years.

It will be a journey to get back to where she was before her emergency that September day, but for Garrett and her fiancé, they are glad she is still here today and consider themselves lucky Garrett is here to watch her children grow up.

No Byline Policy

Editorial Guidelines

Corrections Policy

Source