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MOUND, Minn. (WCCO) ― From the time she was a child growing up in Staples it was all Jamie Gauld could do to keep up with the other children. Running around the playground brought only extreme fatigue and shortness of breath. Gauld said she was always the last one to finish a game or race.

She kept a nebulizer handy for whenever she needed a blast of drug to help open her lungs, making it easier to breathe.

"It didn't leave my side. It was with me everywhere I went," recalled now 30-year-old Gauld.

For nearly all these years, she's been told she suffers from asthma and allergies. But something just didn't add up. This past summer her symptoms grew worse and the nebulizer treatments no longer did the trick. Doctors sent her in for kidney function tests, but once again everything appeared normal.

"I had been in three ambulance rides because I had passed out at work or passed out and convulsed like I was having a seizure. And nobody could ever figure it out, and I would get to the hospital and they would say there was nothing wrong with me," said Gauld.

Ever since her days growing up in Staples, Gauld's best friend has been Sara Nelson. They both attended the University of Minnesota where Gauld pursued elementary education and Nelson studied to be a doctor.

Now a third-year medical student in Florida, Nelson grew increasingly concerned about her friend's difficulty breathing. She noticed that Gauld was retaining fluid around her ankles and besides her fatigue, her legs often left her with a burning sensation.

Nelson knew something wasn't right and urged Gauld to go in and talk to her doctor. She told Gauld that, in her opinion, the symptoms surely pointed to some kind of cardiopulmonary problem.

Gauld remembers Nelson saying, "Tell them you've got Stage 3 pitting edema and that you're having bad circulation in your legs and your legs are burning."

Gauld did what her medical student friend suggested and was referred to heart specialists at Abbott Northwestern Hospital. Cardiologists performed several tests and soon diagnosed "atrial septum defect," a hole in Gauld's heart the size of a half dollar.

The defect, measuring 3.3 centimeters in diameter, had been there from birth. It resulted in blood flow that, instead of circulating through her body and returning to the lungs, was simply passing between the lungs and back into the heart.

It was decades of poor blood flow, not asthma, that was the central cause of her years of fatigue.

Gauld underwent successful open heart surgery at Abbott Northwestern Hospital on Sept. 11. Cardiac surgeons were able to repair the hole and fix a weakened valve in a four-and-a-half-hour surgery.

But 30 years of her heart pumping harder to compensate for the defect has resulted in damage to one side.

"My right side of my heart was severely enlarged, much bigger than the left side because it had worked so hard for so many years trying to keep up," said Gauld.

One month post surgery, she now spends three days a week in cardiac rehab, where, she says, she's the youngest patient by double her years. But more importantly, she's feeling stronger with each step.

It's all possible thanks to a sharp, young medical student and a caring best friend.

"If it wasn't for her, I don't know how much longer I'd be here," said Gauld.

On Oct. 26, Gauld's friends and family plan a benefit for her in her hometown of Staples. The spaghetti dinner will raise money to help defray the cost of her medical bills.

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