She went to "hell and back" for a diagnosis. Then her sister showed symptoms.
Megan Kaverman's weight gain, fatigue, high blood pressure and other symptoms were dismissed for years before she was diagnosed with a rare heart disease.
Updated on: August 1, 2026 / 11:27 AM EDT / CBS News
Megan Kaverman knew something was wrong with her. At 18, she had started to experience some weight gain and shortness of breath, but her family doctor "never figured out what was going on." Soon, the symptoms became so commonplace that she barely noticed them.
Then, at 25, she began dealing with sudden, severe fatigue. Breathing became a struggle. She didn't understand what was happening, or why.
For years, she struggled to find answers. Her primary care physician highlighted her weight gain, but couldn't explain its cause. One doctor suggested she eat less pizza. Her high blood pressure was dismissed as nerves. Multiple trips to the emergency room ended with no clarity. Doctors reassured her it likely wasn't anything major.
"They just kind of pushed it aside, like, '(You're) too young to have a heart problem,'" Kaverman recalled.
But she could barely function. One day in 2016, Kaverman, then 27, went back to the emergency room. Tests showed she was in the early stages of heart failure . Kaverman said she wasn't leaving without a diagnosis. She ended up in the ICU, where an intensive diagnosis process identified the source of her troubles: a rare heart disease called heritable pulmonary arterial hypertension.