Woman who fought viral infection has heart attack
YORK, Pa. – Teresa Kline received the all-clear to return to work on June 21.
Kline had just fought back from a severe COVID-19 infection, recuperating at home. She was scheduled to return to work – the 50-year-old York, Pennsylvania, resident is a registered nurse at WellSpan’s York Hospital – the following Friday. On that Sunday, Kline and her husband, Noel, visited Gettysburg. Her husband, a freelance photographer, often works at the battlefield, documenting battlefield preservation for the National Park Service and other organizations and publications. He also freelances for Gannett newspapers.
They went for a hike and Kline felt fine, getting a bit of exercise and fresh air. The next morning, she said she felt chest pains.
“It was a different feeling,” she said. It felt like constant pressure on her chest, like someone was pressing down on her breastbone. She began feeling nauseous. Then she felt pain in her arms, especially her left arm.
“I think I’m having a heart attack,” she told her husband.
Her fight against the novel coronavirus wasn’t over.
COVID-19 is, technically speaking, a respiratory virus, attacking the lungs.
But, like some other viruses, it also wages war against the body on other fronts. One of those fronts seems to be the vascular system, where the virus causes blood clots to form, the globules of jellied blood threatening the heart, the brain and other organs and tissues.
In April, pathologists performing autopsies of those who had died of COVID-19 began noticing the clotting. A study published in The Lancet journal EClinical Medicine described autopsies performed on seven patients, and all revealed massive amounts of clotting.
“This was dramatic because though we have expected it in the lungs, we found it in almost every organ,” Amy Rapkeiwicz, chair of the department of pathology at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, told CNN.
There have been reports of COVID-19 patients having heart attacks, and those patients often have “significantly worse” outcomes, said Dr. Tom Maddox, chair of the American College of Cariology’s science and quality committee.
But at this point, Maddox, who teaches at Washington University’s School of Medicine in St. Louis, said little is known about how the clotting occurs. “There is a lot we’re still learning about this virus,” he said.
For Kline, it turned out a large blood clot had blocked a vital cardiac artery, cutting off the blood supply to her heart. The cardiologist installed two stents in the vessel, she said.
She had no history of cardiac issues. The episode left Kline’s heart functioning at about 25% percent, she said. She has an external defibrillator and if her heart doesn’t rebound, she could be looking at a transplant.
This disease, she said, “sucks.”