Vail resident born with a heart condition inspires others to thrive
Vail resident Naomi James was born with multiple heart defects and had two open heart surgeries by the age of 27. She wasn’t expected to live past 30 despite the first surgery and was told she would never be able to have children.
James is now 34 and is a mother of two. She has a 9-year-old son and a newborn baby girl. James has defied the odds.
Growing up in Atlanta, her early childhood was centered around her heart disease. Born with a congenital defect called Tetralogy of Fallot, which affects blood flow through the heart, she had her first open heart surgery when she was around 3 months old.
She had more procedures and was on a heavy medication regimen throughout her childhood.
“The school nurse and I were friends,” James said. “I was always in her office for something. She had to administer my medications every day.”
Her early life was full of restrictions beyond medication. James had asthma, limiting the activities she could participate in. If she overexerted herself, she would faint.
Congenital heart defects are the most common type of birth defect, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1 in 4 babies born with a heart defect has a critical congenital defect and needs surgery.
Eventually, James outgrew her asthma. When she was 14, her cardiologist allowed James to participate in color guard, an activity that involves twirling a flag and saber, and dancing.
“Once I got clearance to do something, I was like, I am going to do everything I can to stay away from the hospital,” James said.
She was resolute, she said. She followed her doctor’s instructions, ate a healthy diet recommended by the American Heart Association, lost weight, and stayed active and hydrated, which helped her maintain her health.
James is among 12 other heart disease and stroke survivors chosen for the American Heart Association’s 2023 class of the Go Red for Real Women campaign.
The campaign aims to raise awareness of heart disease and stroke in women and inspire people to take charge of their physical and mental health.
A ‘tumultuous’ experience giving birth to her son
James said one of her formative experiences has nothing to do with her heart disease and everything to do with systemic racism. It happened during the birth of her son, two years before her second heart surgery.
“My birth experience was tumultuous. It was absolutely a nightmare,” she said.
James never intended to get pregnant, as having a baby after a valve repair can increase risk. However, as she was researching options for permanent birth control, she found out she was pregnant.
When it was time to give birth, her medical team tried to induce labor, and she got a rare infection called chorioamnionitis. Her fever shot up to 104 degrees, and she almost had a seizure.
James tried to tell her nurses something was wrong, but no one would listen to her.
“My life was in danger,” she said. Eventually, her mother and her husband understood something was wrong and convinced her anesthesiologist, who admitted she wasn’t well.
He rechecked her vitals, saw her fever was high and decided she needed an emergency cesarean section.
While James successfully had a baby boy, her story is all too common, she said. Black women are systemically under-treated for pain.
According to the CDC, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. The CDC attributes this to many factors, from variations in quality healthcare and underlying chronic conditions to structural racism and implicit bias.
James not only wants to advocate for women’s heart health but also for maternal health so people do not experience what she did.
“That’s something that I do want to advocate more for, teaching (women) to take control of their health — advocate for themselves and speak up for themselves,” she said.
This fearless passion is something her husband Rodney James saw in her the day he met her. The two were high school sweethearts.
“Fearless does not mean that she doesn’t second guess herself, that she’s not afraid. She does have fear, but she pushes past that fear. She has faith in what she believes in,” Rodney said.
Rodney listed a slew of things James was told she could not do: from having kids to being active and even becoming a nurse. He mentioned her first couple of months in nursing school were challenging and she was told to find a different major.
“That thing that impresses me and that I look up to Naomi about is her fearlessness and ability to dream big and go after her dream regardless of her physical situation.”
She refused that narrative and pushed past the limits put on her.
The valve repair on her heart didn’t last forever
Her health regimen worked for many years.
But then for about two years after the birth of her son, James said cardiac-related symptoms appeared gradually,
including swelling and shortness of breath. James still remembers the day her symptoms reached a tipping point.
She was with her husband and son at a carnival in Georgia and went on a ride called the Fun Slide with her son.
When she reached the bottom of the slide, she was not able to get up or catch her breath and she felt dizzy.
When she later visited her cardiologist, he told her that the heart repair made when she was a baby lasted longer than expected. She needed to replace the valve on her heart that had been repaired when she was younger.
James said she felt devastated at the thought of going through another surgery. Surgery meant being in the Intensive Care Unit and months of physical therapy.
“When they repaired my heart, that was back in 1980 and now I carried a baby on top of that,” she said.
By the time her son was two years old, her ejection fraction, the percent of blood pumped out of the heart, was low. Her left ventricle was overworking itself and her right ventricle was swollen.
Basic activities were difficult for her, such as movements as simple as walking up a flight of stairs.
A long and rough recovery process
The surgery went well, and James said she had excellent care, but recovery was still tough.
The hard part was six weeks after surgery, she said, recalling how she had to build back her upper body strength during nine months of rehabilitation.
“I couldn’t lift my son. He was only two at the time,” she said.
There were times when the pain was unbearable, James said. She described feeling as though her chest was tearing when she reached for something with her arms.
What made her recovery more difficult was the lack of heavy painkillers. After her surgery, her medical team did not give her narcotics for the pain, so she used over-the-counter medication.
“I feel like I had to bear that open heart surgery with Tylenol and ibuprofen,” she said, attributing her doctor’s hesitancy in prescribing her with narcotics to the opioid epidemic.
A full year passed before James finally began to feel normal again.
James wants to help women advocate for their health
Her experience with her illness and giving birth to her son has informed how James cares for her patients as a nurse.
“I make sure I listen to people,” she said, adding that patients know when something is wrong even if they cannot always articulate it.
She moved to Arizona four years ago and works as a faculty member at Cochise College, and wants to use her platform to empower women.
James said her goal is to increase awareness of how people who have had heart surgeries can live full and thriving lives.
Christopher Calloway, a spokesperson for the American Heart Association said James was chosen for the Go Red for Real Women campaign because of her inspirational story.
“She inspires all women to take charge of their own health and mental well-being,” Calloway said in an email. “Her story reflects one of the unique life stages that women face that can affect their cardiovascular risk and overall health.”