Sydney Pelusio is a busy wife and mother of two. She faced a life-threatening health crisis in March 2024.
The active runner initially thought she had the flu when she experienced general fatigue and overall sickness. After three days, her family urged her to seek medical help. IV and generic medication wasn’t helping. Instead, her condition worsened and she was rushed to Unity Hospital.
“I think an hour and 15 minutes after arriving at Unity is when I was already in the cath lab and had cardiac arrest,” she recounted.
Doctors diagnosed her with myocarditis, a condition triggered by a virus that causes inflammation of the heart muscle. Her immune system was attacking her heart.
“In the setting of a heart attack, you say time is muscle, so the longer you wait, the more the heart muscle dies and these situations, we were looking just to keep Sydney alive,” said Dr. Cameron Hall, an interventional cardiologist at Rochester Regional Health.
Sydney’s life was saved by Impella, the world’s smallest heart pump. “It’s an implantable device that goes through the arteries. It gets into the heart, and it actively pumps blood out of the heart and into the body, and it keeps the body alive,” Dr. Hall explained.
See the full coverage: Mother runs half-marathon less than one year after cardiac arrest
