A mother’s ten-year struggle with prescription ADHD medication resulted in severe heart damage, leading to a heart attack and the difficult decision to end a pregnancy to protect her own life.

Mandi Masterpole began using drugs after being assaulted at the age of 11, turning to substances like Adderall without a prescription to manage the trauma she endured.

At 21, Masterpole became pregnant with her first child and ceased taking the pills, but the harm to her heart had already been inflicted.

When she went into labor with her daughter, Shae, Masterpole experienced not one, but two heart attacks.

Following these critical incidents, doctors conducted emergency surgery to place a device that aids blood flow to her heart, which was then only functioning at 30 percent capacity.

Ever since, Masterpole has desired another child and was overjoyed to discover she was pregnant earlier this year. However, her joy was short-lived as doctors warned that the stress of the pregnancy could be fatal, advising her to have an abortion.

Pregnancy can put significant strain on the heart, as blood volume increases by up to 60 percent, requiring the organ to work harder and pump more blood, which can raise heart rate and exacerbate pre-existing cardiovascular conditions. 

Masterpole, now 34, told the Daily Mail that she felt she needed to be there for her partner and her daughter, who is now 12, so she had the abortion in October – about four weeks into her pregnancy.

Mandy Masterpole’s heart, weakened by years of strain and mismanaged diabetes, failed after she gave birth, leaving her reliant on a pump that then caused a persistent infection (Masterpole pictured above)

‘I have to be here for Shae,’ she said. ‘Anything that happened to me could happen to her, and I may not be [here]. There’s no way I can risk it.’

Nearly 18 million Americans reported taking prescription stimulants such as Adderall or Vyvanse in the past year. Masterpole is among them, however she was never prescribed them by a doctor. 

She told the Daily Mail that she was looking for an escape after her traumatic assault, and found it when a friend gave her her first tablet.

Her recreational use was initially to keep up with her school work and social life. But it soon escalated into a full-blown addiction, progressing to snorting the drug multiple times a day and spending most of her paycheck on it. 

Adderall is a class II controlled substance, which means it has an accepted medical use but a high potential for abuse. 

Masterpole’s long-term abuse had devastating health consequences. 

The stimulants suppressed her appetite, causing her weight to plummet, and, more critically, placed immense strain on her heart. 

She had her first heart attack soon after giving birth to Shae at 22. After the initial attack, Masterpole’s heart stopped twice.

At that time, doctors implanted an LVAD – a device to help pump blood to the heart – and placed her on the wait list for a heart transplant. 

Years of heavy drug use in addition to mismanaging her diabetes made Masterpole’s heart ‘ridiculously weak.’ Doctors have since told her that her heart health has improved by about 43 percent (Pictured: Masterpole in the hospital)

But after the surgery, Masterpole suffered a severe bacterial infection.  

Infections are common in people with LVAD implants because they involve an external tube, which creates a permanent entry point for pathogens.

An estimated 60 percent of LVAD patients have been reported to suffer an infection within 90 days of having it implanted.

Thinking they had treated the bacterial infection, doctors replaced Masterpole’s LVAD, but her infection returned worse than before.

When operating to remove this second infection, surgeons were forced to leave a piece of the device attached to her left ventricle, telling her it was too dangerous to remove.

On top of her existing heart issues, the piece of the device would make a second pregnancy fatal, doctors told her.

Then, at age 26, Masterpole had a pacemaker and defibrillator installed. The pacemaker regulates her heartbeat, while the defibrillator monitors its rhythm to prevent sudden cardiac arrest.

Although these devices alone did not necessarily threaten her or a fetus, doctors determined that the stress of any future labor would overwhelm the pacemaker. 

Years after her heart attacks, Masterpole became pregnant. Her cardiologist personally called to caution her, explaining that the remnant of the LVAD device in her heart made continuing the pregnancy dangerously risky

To this day, Masterpole is taking antibiotics for the second infection and medications to help her heart pump more efficiently. 

She was near the top of the transplant waiting list for weeks initially. 

Now, at 34, she is at the bottom of the list as doctors have determined that her heart function has improved significantly (from about 30 percent to 43 percent thanks to medications). 

But that is not enough of an improvement to make pregnancy safe. 

‘My heart doctor himself called me on the phone and was like, “Listen, I know you’re excited about this pregnancy, but the fact that you still have a piece of that machine in you, and we couldn’t put an LVAD in right away, [puts you at] extremely high risk,”‘ Masterpole said.

She told the Daily Mail that she deals with the emotional pain of the recent abortion by focusing on Shae. Masterpole is protective of her daughter and dreads the thought of no longer being the support system she needs.

‘I would never leave her in a position where anything that happened to me could happen to her. Over my dead body,’ she said. 

Despite her sadness at knowing she can no longer carry children, Masterpole received encouraging news after undergoing an imaging test on her heart.

‘Doctors were like, “You’re looking great,”‘ she said. ‘Hearing that I’ve been doing so well after that, it made me feel good.’

Masterpole’s greatest fear is leaving her daughter (pictured holding onto Masterpole) without a mother, a dread that fuels her fierce protectiveness

The doctors initially told her she likely wouldn’t live past Shae’s seventh birthday. Now, Masterpole has her sights set on seeing her daughter graduate from high school.

‘My fear was like, I’m going to give up this baby and then I’m going to die anyway,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘And then to hear… “You probably will make it to her graduation” – that means a lot to me.

‘She’s right around the corner from 13, and I wasn’t supposed to be here. That’s amazing, and that’s why I’d be crazy to risk it [by having another child].’

Amphetamines like Adderall constrict blood vessels and reduce oxygen to the heart. They can also trigger artery spasms that block blood flow, worsening heart damage. 

They disrupt the regular electrical activity in the heart, causing life-threatening disruption to normal rhythms known as ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation.

Meanwhile, her unmanaged type 1 diabetes – which was diagnosed in childhood – was also affecting her heart, as uncontrolled blood sugar damages its vessels and weakens its muscle.

‘In honesty, I was blowing my heart out, and I had no mindset of even knowing what I was doing because I wasn’t taking my insulin and the damage was done,’ Masterpole told the Daily Mail. 

Some days are harder than others, she said – confronting one’s own mortality is destabilizing and overwhelming. But Masterpole does puzzles to keep her mind busy and focuses on Shae, ‘who has gotten me through all this.’

‘She keeps me going. That girl is more my strength and determination than she’ll ever realize.’