In the quiet hours before dawn, while most of Chicago sleeps, Tracey Young and her husband arrive at Planet Fitness. It’s 3:30 a.m., a time chosen deliberately to avoid the social butterflies who gather later in the day. The couple, married for nearly 33 years, moves methodically through their routine: treadmill at level 2, speed 2, incline 2. For Young, these numbers represent more than machine settings; they’re milestones in a journey that began with a devastating diagnosis more than two decades ago.
“I can lift weights, I can actually pull up on my body weight,” Young says with unmistakable pride. “I can pick me up.” This achievement, seemingly modest to most, represents an extraordinary victory for a woman once told she wouldn’t live to see her daughter turn five.
When breathing becomes a battle
In the weeks following the birth of her daughter Amber, Young noticed something troubling: she couldn’t catch her breath. “I actually thought that I was developing asthma,” she recalls. At her six-week postpartum checkup, she mentioned the breathing difficulty to her OB-GYN. The doctor paid attention but ultimately brushed it off, attributing her symptoms to her weight without checking her blood pressure.
The next day, Young’s primary care physician took her blood pressure and found it alarmingly high. As the doctor listened to Young’s heart, she “heard the fluid rushing through like a river” and immediately called 911. At the hospital, a cardiologist delivered the crushing news: Young had postpartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM), a rare form of heart failure that occurs during pregnancy or immediately after childbirth. The prognosis was grim…