LAKEPORT — Lakeport resident Annette Mott, 34, spent the Christmas and New Year holidays in two hospitals after having sextuple, or six-way, heart bypass surgery because of congestive heart failure.
“I”m trying to get home healthy and it”s going to be a long road,” Mott said in a phone interview from her hospital room at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) in San Francisco.
Mott said doctors have told her she was predisposed to her condition. “This is a genetic heart disease,” she said, “and there was nothing I could do about it.”
Mott”s mother died in 1993 at age 44 after suffering a massive heart attack, according to Mott”s sister, Connie Davis.
“I couldn”t believe it,” Mott”s friend, Stephanie Wilson, said about learning of the diagnosis. It “shocked” Wilson to find out that heart failure could happen to a young woman who appeared to active and healthy.
Mott, who works for Evergreen Lakeport Healthcare, and her husband Jim live near the lake and have been active boaters in the summertime and enjoyed going to the snow during the winter, Wilson said.
Mott first went to Sutter Lakeside Hospital”s emergency room on Dec. 20 for seemingly unrelated concerns, stomach problems and tiredness, Davis said, and an ER doctor made the initial heart-related diagnosis after reviewing initial test results.
Officials transferred Mott to St. Helena Hospital via ambulance the next day, where doctors performed a nearly eight-hour sextuple bypass surgery on Dec 22, Davis said.
Doctors had difficulty starting Mott”s heart and experienced several other issues during the surgery, according to Davis. “It”s a miracle we were able to keep her through Christmas,” Davis said.
Mott said she doesn”t remember anything that happened in the days following the surgery. The first thing she remembered was arriving at CMPC on Dec. 26 and looking up at her husband Jim.
She spent most of the next week in CPMC”s coronary care unit (CCU). Davis said it was her sister”s “willingness to fight” that helped Mott endure those early days at CPMC.
Mott moved to the transitional CCU wing on Tuesday, after beginning physical therapy and showing other signs of improvement. A heart transplant is all but imminent for Mott, according to Davis, and there is “a very small chance” that Mott could return home before a transplant surgery.
The American Heart Association (AHA) referred to a heart transplant on its website as “a proven procedure to restore heart health” for eligible patients.
Doctors are now trying to help Mott”s body transition from intravenous medications to oral ones while everybody waits for additional test results.
The support from friends and family “has been huge” for her recovery, Mott said. Her parents-in-law, Michael and Christa Mott, her father, John Rosal, and his wife Caroline have provided great amounts of support, Mott said. She also has enjoyed the numerous get-well e-mails and Facebook messages from family and friends.
Mott has reached out to her sister, imploring Davis to get her own heart examined. “I don”t want to see her laid up like me,” Mott said.
Mott also encourages her fellow Lake County residents to be cognizant of their own heart health. “If there is heart disease in their family, get it checked out,” she said. Mott also urged people to “change your lifestyle” with regards to healthy eating.
The AHA website said that a number of “lifestyle factors” can also contribute to heart disease, listing smoking, lack of physical activity and poor dieting choices as major contributors.
In the meantime, Mott said it is unclear when she will be able to return to Lakeport but her health is improving and she feels “so much better, making progress day by day.”
Wilson has established a donation website on behalf of the Motts, where friends and concerned citizens can offer financial support: http://annettemott.chipin.com. Wilson also plans to set up an account at the local Umpqua Bank where people can also make donations.
Contact Jeremy Walsh at jwalsh@record-bee.com or call him at 263-5636, ext. 37.
