On my last day of post-surgical cardiac rehabilitation in Dec. 2021, I sat outside the hospital in my car and cried. Just seven months earlier, I had swallowed a handful of medication in a desperate attempt to get relief from an illness that doctors had struggled to diagnose since I was a little girl. Fortunately, my husband found me unconscious, and I woke up three days later in the intensive care unit happy to be alive. I spent the next seven days in intensive care and three more on the cardiac floor before returning home to Bald Knob, Arkansas to face an uncertain future.
Read Emma Nelson's full story from Kansas City Mom Collective
