Dianna Amberg
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n 2010, Dianna Amberg was a healthy 38-year-old who ate right and exercised. However, that summer she got sick. She was taking classes at Bakersfield College and could only walk a few steps without losing her breath. Her doctor eventually diagnosed her with pneumonia and then bronchitis, or bronchial asthma. One day she felt so bad that she decided to miss her class and called her husband to pick her up. On her way to meet him, she collapsed twice. Dianna thought the bad air quality that day was causing her symptoms to be more severe. Once she was home, Dianna’s heart felt like it was racing. Her husband encouraged her to check her blood pressure using the machine he had at home. Dianna’s blood pressure was high each time she checked. She made three different calls to her doctor’s office and explained her symptoms. Each time she was told her doctor would call her back. The last time she called, she was told to go to the emergency room immediately. At the hospital, a technician grabbed a doctor and told him “VTAC,” referring to a scan used to assess coronary artery disease. Dianna’s heart needed to be stopped and restarted. She spent the night and woke up the next morning to learn that a virus had entered her heart. She underwent surgery and received a pacemaker and an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. Research that led to this lifesaving technology was funded by the American Heart Association. For about four years, Dianna felt better and worked to return to normal life. However, from February to May 2014, her defibrillator shocked her on several occasions and she was in and out of the hospital. One day, she felt so sick she went to work with her husband because she didn’t want to be alone. By the end of that day she was back at the hospital with heart complications. At the hospital, Dianna underwent
an ablation surgery to correct the incorrect electrical signals that were causing her heart to have an abnormal rhythm, but her heart still couldn’t sustain itself. She had to be airlifted to a hospital in San Francisco. After 24 hours there, she went back into heart failure and her husband made the difficult decision for Dianna to undergo surgery to receive a left ventricular assist device to help her heart function. Afterward, she was in a medically induced coma for a month and a half and then spent another two and half months in the hospital doing rehabilitation to relearn fine motor skills and how to walk. On April 13, 2016, Dianna received the call that she had been approved for the heart transplant waitlist. Her daughter was getting married in Las Vegas three days later. She was cleared
by her medical team to make the trip. The day after the wedding, Dianna got the call that a new heart was ready for her and she needed to head back to San Francisco as soon as possible. The night before her surgery, she cuddled with her husband in the hospital bed and talked about the “what ifs.” Dianna believed whatever the outcome of the surgery, it was “God’s will.” Fortunately, the surgery was a success. Today, Dianna is focused on staying healthy for her new heart and her children and grandchildren. She is the president of the Bakersfield chapter of Mended Hearts, where she volunteers to help inform and comfort other heart patients during peer-to-peer visits. She hopes to one day connect with the family of the heart donor who gave her a second chance at life.
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