Oregon newlywed goes into cardiac arrest day after wedding, learns of rare condition
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Just one day after her wedding, a 28-year-old Happy Valley woman and her husband were headed to Hawaii to celebrate their nuptials. But on the way to the airport, she went into cardiac arrest — and later learned she had a rare condition that’s been diagnosed for only a few people worldwide.
Sara and Mitch Seeley were being driven to the Portland International Airport on Oct. 23, when she went into cardiac arrest. Her mother-in-law, who was sending the couple off to their honeymoon, pulled over so Mitch could perform CPR.
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Sara was soon rushed to an Adventist Health facility where medical staff was able to get a pulse after 20 minutes. After several hours of treatment, she was transported to OHSU’s Intensive Care Unit.
According to her sister Jane Madden, Sara’s first four weeks in the ICU consisted of several tests as staff worked to identify what caused the cardiac arrest. Finally, a doctor determined that she had high iron levels — a symptom of juvenile hemochromatosis.
Stanford Medicine Children’s Health said the rare condition affects people between the ages of 15 and 30, and can lead to heart and liver disease.
“There’s been less than 200 diagnosed cases ever,” Madden, who’s pursuing a PhD in biomedical sciences, told KOIN 6. “It’s a recessive condition, which means both our mom and her dad are carriers and it’s just very rare for that to come together and happen and she just happened to get both of the bad alleles.”
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In addition to the cardiac arrest, Madden says her sister had a stroke on the right side of her brain that temporarily paralyzed the left side of her body. Sara is now undergoing physical therapy to return to normal function — in addition to the heart medications and iron chelation that could treat her rare condition.
However, the newlywed and her family have been slammed with medical bills during her time in the hospital.
“Before she was married, she didn’t have health insurance because she had too much to qualify for OHP [and] not enough to pay for private insurance. It’s a predicament a lot of people are in,” Madden said.
She noted that Sara was added to Mitch’s insurance plan shortly after the wedding, but at that point, medical bills had already begun to pile up.
Since Sara is unable to work and her husband recently returned to work to continue receiving insurance coverage, Madden launched an online fundraiser to help alleviate the newlyweds’ stress.
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Thus far, the crowdfund has raised about $15,000. The goal was recently raised to $100,000, and Madden hopes that can support her sister as she covers the cost of both hospital visits, life-saving medications and any ongoing treatments.
“They are hopeful that her heart failure can be reversed with the treatment,” she said. “There’s like four case studies out there of people who’ve had this condition and had heart failure and come back from it.”
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