More than anything else my husband and I wanted a family.  We got pregnant with no problems but around the 8th month of my pregnancy I stared to feel very short of breath, my ankles were very swollen and I was very tired. My doctors didn’t think anything was wrong with a pregnant woman having those symptoms in her 8th month of pregnancy. 

I went to the local ER and they found that I was in congestive heart failure or Peripartum Cardiomyopathy, a rare disorder in which a weakened heart is diagnosed within the final month of pregnancy or within 5 months after delivery. Our baby boy died that night and there wasn‘t much hope for my life.

I was sent to Hershey Medical Center.  Once I got to Hershey, I had multi-organ failure.  I was placed on the top of the heart transplant list and lived on a heart pump for 75 days. My heart recovered and I did not need a transplant.  Thanks to the wisdom of the doctors at Hershey, I can live a normal life now on only a few medications.

Traci King saw eight different teams during her stay at Penn State Hershey Medical Center. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, suffering a severe heart attack, and dealing with a ruptured appendix within weeks of each other, it’s safe to say that 36-year old Traci has been through a lot in one year, Traci spent 1,296 hours admitted at the Medical Center, in addition to the countless hours for infusions and follow-up appointments.

Now healthy and cancer-free, she credits her recovery to the teams that treated her during her stay, including Oncology, Surgical, Hematology, Infectious Disease, Dermatology, Cardiology, Life Lion, and the ICU.