What You Learn When You Can’t Push Through: A Founder Recovery Story

At the start of this year, I disappeared in the middle of building Pet Protect & Connect.

I had just started onboarding rescues. I was in active conversations with several more. We had meetings scheduled for the first week of January, and real momentum was starting to build. And then I went completely quiet. 

The short version is: the weekend after Christmas, I had emergency open-heart surgery.

The part that didn’t make sense at the time

Leading up to that weekend, nothing clearly pointed to what was coming.

I was tired, but I’m building a startup while working a full-time+ job and supporting freelance clients. That kind of fatigue felt accounted for. I had neck and back pain, which I wrote off as too many hours at a desk. There was nothing that made me stop and think something was seriously wrong.

That Saturday was completely ordinary. I was building out a Pet Protect & Connect demo, working on a freelance project, spending time with my dogs, and clearing snow off my car so I could head to the gym.

Somewhere in the middle of that, I felt a sharp pain in my jaw.

It was brief. No chest pain, no shortness of breath, nothing that matched how people typically describe heart issues. I remember standing there trying to decide if it even happened or if I imagined it. I knew that jaw pain can be a sign of a heart issue in women. But it didn’t line up with how I felt overall, and I almost dismissed it.

I went to urgent care mostly to confirm I was fine. I fully expected to be in and out and go on with my day. Within a couple of hours, I was in the emergency room. My X-rays were clear. Other bloodwork came back normal. My heart tests didn’t show anything alarming. There was no obvious reason to think this was serious. The only thing that flagged was a D-dimer test. That one result changed everything. More imaging followed. The pace shifted and suddenly I was being transferred to another hospital.

That’s where I met the surgeon who told me I had an aortic aneurysm and needed surgery immediately. He also walked through the risk—about a 20% chance I wouldn’t survive the surgery, and another 20% chance I wouldn’t make it through the first week after.

There isn’t really a way to process that. You listen, you ask what you can, and you move forward.

What recovery actually looked like

I spent close to three weeks in the hospital, much of it in the ICU. And recovery didn’t end when I left. It meant months of being limited in ways I’m not used to—physically, mentally, and professionally. I couldn’t work for more than three months.

I also couldn’t live at home with my pets during that time. Baby, Dexter, and SuChang have routines, needs, personalities. They’re not “drop them off and check in” pets—they require real care.

I was incredibly fortunate to have dogsitters who already knew them—and who my pets knew and trusted—step in and quite literally move into my home. They maintained routines. They made sure my pets were safe, cared for, and not dealing with the added stress of unfamiliar environments or constant change.

Because of that, I didn’t have to worry about them at a time when I needed a walker to get around and couldn’t lift something as basic as a bag of dog food or kitty litter.

If you have pets, especially aging or chronically ill pets, having a real support system in place matters. Not just a list of names—but people your animals are comfortable with, who understand their needs, and who can step in fully if they have to.

At the same time, I had Charlotte. Her grandparents took me in during recovery and lucky for us, their home is her second home too. Charlotte was with me every day from the moment I came home from the hospital through the entire stretch of early recovery, until I was able to move back home and be with Baby, Dexter, and SuChang full time again. Recovery without a dog was and is unimaginable for me.

When you go through something like this, you realize very quickly that recovery isn’t something you do alone, even if you’re used to being independent.

The things I’m grateful I didn’t have to figure out in the moment

One of those is having a will and power of attorney already in place.

It’s easy to put that off when you’re healthy and busy. In my case, having those decisions made ahead of time meant that when things got serious, the focus stayed where it needed to be. Someone I trust was able to step in and make decisions without hesitation or confusion.

If you don’t have those things in place, do it. It makes an already difficult situation clearer for everyone involved.

What this exposed in my startup work

When I went into surgery, Pet Protect & Connect stopped. There were rescues I had just started onboarding, others I was mid-conversation with, and meetings already on the calendar. From their perspective, I disappeared.

My power of attorney did their best to step in and communicate where possible, and I’m deeply grateful for that. And I’m equally grateful to the rescues who gave me the space to recover before picking things back up.

At the same time, it made something clear: If a business like this depends entirely on one person, it’s not set up to serve the people it’s meant to support.

Animal rescue doesn’t pause. If I’m asking rescues to trust this platform as part of how they operate, then it has to be stable and responsive in a way that doesn’t hinge on whether I’m personally available.

What changes now

I’m back, and I’m in a place where I can start building again with consistency.

And I’m not doing it alone. Our new Director of Operations is onboarding now. His focus is continuity—making sure conversations don’t drop, processes don’t stall, and the day-to-day work keeps moving in a way that’s reliable for the rescues we’re supporting.

Where this leaves us

If we were in conversation before all of this happened, I’ll be reconnecting. To the rescues who showed patience and understanding while I recovered, thank you. That mattered, and I don’t take it lightly.

What happened to me was sudden and out of my control. I didn’t have warning signs, and I didn’t have the option to “push through” or manage around it. What I did do was listen to something small that didn’t feel right and get it checked—and that decision saved my life.

— Liz, Pet Protect & Connect Founder