The moment Kirsten Dorsey realized she would deliver her second child and have open-heart surgery on the same day, her heart raced and her breath quickened. But then, a sense of calm overtook her as she lay in her hospital bed in Connecticut. After weeks of uncertainty about her own health and her baby boy's well-being, Dorsey knew she was exactly where she needed to be.
"Let's do this!" she said, waving goodbye to her fiancé, Zac Connors, and putting on a brave face as medical staff wheeled her into the operating room. Seventeen days earlier, Dorsey – then 29 and already the mom of a 1-year-old daughter – had nervously sat in a cardiologist's office awaiting the results of an echocardiogram, an ultrasound that shows how blood flows through the heart, and an electrocardiogram, which measures the heart's electrical activity. She'd never had heart problems before, or any health problems, really.
But in recent years, she learned about a family history of them. The revelations began when her grandfather died of a heart attack that was traced to Marfan syndrome, an inherited disorder that impacts the body's connective tissues. People with the disorder can have problems with their aorta.
Only then did her step-grandmother give her a detailed family history outlining the family battle with Marfan syndrome. Because the condition is genetic, Dorsey obviously was at risk – and her offspring. And, she happened to learn all this while pregnant with her first child.
She'd already .
