Mary Duarte remembers on June 21 sitting in her Belton home around 6 p.m. talking to her family when she started to feel a tightness in her chest and chin.
“It felt like I had a 300 pound man sitting on my chest. I couldn’t breathe,” she said.
The 47-year-old told her family to call 9-1-1.
Duarte would soon turn to one of the world’s experts in aortic heart valves and Marfan syndrome, Dr. George Arnaoutakis, who arrived in Austin six months earlier to start the comprehensive aortic center at Ascension Seton hospitals. He is the first division chief of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas.
An emergency room doctor in Temple connected Duarte with Arnaoutakis.
Knowing her own body
As a child, Duarte had been diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, which weakens connective tissue, which in this case included her aorta.
The genetic disorder is usually found in people who are really tall, with large hands, fingers, and long limbs. They have very bendable joints. For Duarte, she can do party tricks like turning her hand all the way around. She doesn’t fit the tall stereotype, but the rest of the syndrome’s features are there.