In late 2018, Son Vang developed pneumonia. A few months later, he experienced flu followed by another bout of pneumonia. Doctors performed a chest X-ray after his recurrent illnesses and found something worrisome.
“They happened to see that my heart looked like it enlarged,” Vang, now 46, of Northern Virginia, tells TODAY.com. “They wanted to do a (echocardiogram).
” That test revealed that his ejection fraction, a measure of how effectively your blood pumps, was “really low” and the then 41-year-old was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2019. “It was very scary,” he says. “They even said .
.. it doesn’t look good and if this treatment doesn’t help, you have to be placed on the transplant list and wait for a new heart.
” At the time, Vang was unsure why he was becoming seriously ill so often. “We were constantly trying to figure out why I was coughing so much and why when I got sick, it was worse,” he says. “(In the past) I never had quite the amount of sickness and intensity.
" When doctors finally conducted the X-ray and echocardiogram, they understood Vang's congestive heart failure contributed to him falling ill so often. “The congestive heart failure it allowed me to not fight whatever virus and colds and then it gets worse,” Vang says. Doctors started him on medications to treat his congestive heart failure and placed him on the heart transplant list because he would likely need a new heart in the future.
“Being on certain medic.
