2025 Go Red for Women Class of Survivors: Victoria Rodriguez
As a child, Victoria Rodriguez thought she had asthma. It turned out it was much more serious than that. The doctors discovered she had a congenital heart defect and years later, they discovered her second daughter would be born with one too.
Victoria Rodriguez was born with a heart murmur. Later she was diagnosed with chronic asthma after having trouble breathing and suffering from sleep apnea. Nebulizer treatments became a daily routine. She discovered her love for ice skating when the doctor overseeing her asthma treatment suggested she take up an indoor sport. As soon as her parents put her on the ice, Victoria didn’t want to get off.
Several years later, however, the true source of her issues came to light. During a routine doctor’s visit, the pediatrician didn’t like the way her heart murmur sounded. Concerned about the change, the doctor sent Victoria to a specialist who discovered that only half of her heart was working. Victoria had two congenital heart defects: a hole in the upper chamber of her heart and a pulmonary vein that backed up blood into her lungs instead of sending it to the left side of her heart.
At age 6, Victoria needed open-heart surgery. Nervous, she took her Barbie doll to meet with the surgeon, placing it on her desk and explaining there was something wrong with her heart.
“I need you to fix it,” Victoria said.
The surgeon put on her stethoscope, listened to Barbie's heart, moved her arms and her legs around, and told her young patient that the doll would be OK. That was all Victoria needed to hear to trust the doctor, who “completely fixed my heart.”
Lying in bed recovering was hard because all Victoria wanted to do was ice skate. After months of healing and receiving a green light to return to the rink, Victoria skated as fast as she could.
“I can breathe! I can breathe!” Victoria told her mom.
Not only that, but she would soon begin training six days a week, many hours a day, for 13 years. She became a nationally and internationally ranked competitive ice skater for the United States and Hungary.
At 18, Victoria decided to hang up her skates to focus on school. Soon after graduating college, she started dating her future husband. They talked about Victoria’s health and the advice she received from a doctor to have children sooner rather than later because of the toll pregnancy could have on her heart.
Two months after tying the knot, Victoria was expecting. Doctors closely monitored her high-risk pregnancy, but Victoria still worried about the baby’s heart. She breathed a sigh of relief when a fetal echocardiogram midway through her pregnancy showed a perfectly normal heart. Several months later, Victoria became a first-time mom to Isabella.
Two years later, pregnant again, Victoria learned during a 20-week anatomy scan that her baby, Rylee, had a hole in her heart.
“I just immediately broke down because everything that happened with me came up, like, is she going to have to go through surgery and have to have all of these experiences that I had?” Victoria said, now 31. “I was so devastated.”
The Southern California mom began seeing a specialist, which included more doctor visits and additional testing. She was grateful to learn the hole in her youngest daughter’s heart was small, and doctors expected it to close within a year. A cardiologist, who monitored Rylee’s heart since birth, told the family a week after her first birthday that the hole had closed.
“We're very, very thankful that she has no symptoms,” Victoria said. “She will hopefully never ever have any effects from it.”
Victoria, who has been spreading awareness about heart disease since she was 8, wants other women to take charge of their health and get all the information they can.
“It’s so important to advocate for your own health, to advocate for the health of your children, to understand your family history, and to be able to make really informed decisions about your health based on that,” she said.
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