Help Brianna Linde Receive Life-Changing Heart Surgery

THE WOODLANDS, TX -- Brianna Linde is a 20-year-old college student who currently lives in Conroe, Texas. She’s a server at Willie’s Grill and Icehouse and plans to be a Financial Analyst when she graduates. She also lives with a heart condition that affects her every day.

Supraventricular tachycardia, more commonly referred to as SVT, is defined as an abnormally rapid heartbeat that develops when the normal electrical impulses of the heart are disrupted. Common symptoms include chest pain, fainting, fatigue, lightheadedness, or sweating, fast heart rate and shortness of breath.

Linde said that SVT limits her ability to live as a normal young adult. “I can’t work out because it’s too much strain on my heart to push myself. I can’t ride roller coasters or go on water slides because it could cause an episode where my heart rate goes to 200 plus,” she continued. “Sometimes at work I have to sit down because as a server I have to be fast-paced and my heart doesn’t like to cooperate,” she said.

Her cardiologist told her that she has three options: to limit her life and live with the possibility that the episodes could become more intense and frequent, to take medication for the rest of her life, or to undergo cardiac ablation, a surgery that would burn or freeze the passageway in her heart that is causing the electrical signals to be thrown off. The scar tissue produced by the procedure would essentially block the abnormal electrical signals and restore a normal heart rhythm.

Unfortunately, when Brianna went in for a pre-op appointment on November 6, the hospital denied her surgery because she couldn’t provide the $2,450 down payment. That’s when she decided to create a GoFundMe to raise money for the procedure, which will cost $5,200 in total with insurance.

“I wouldn’t usually create one of these, but while being in college, working, and my car just breaking down on me, I feel like I have no option,” she wrote in the fundraiser’s description. “Without this surgery, my cardiologists have told me by the time I’m 50 I’ll have the heart of an 80 year old and I’ll be on medication the rest of my life.”

For those who are able to donate, please click here to be directed to the page. For those who cannot, Linde asks to please send a prayer her way.

“To anyone that donates, I would first like to say thank you so much,” she said. “I got diagnosed the year before I turned 20 and I had plans of going to the Air Force. Unfortunately I’m no longer able to go with a heart condition. I’ve had to change so many things in my life; it would mean the world to me to be able to feel normal again,” she said.