MIAMI - D'Zhana Simmons says she felt like a "fake person" for 118 days when she had no heart beating in her chest. "But I know that I really was here," the 14-year-old said, "and I did live without a heart."
As she was being released Wednesday from a Miami hospital, the shy teen seemed in awe of what she's endured. Since July, she's had two heart transplants and survived with artificial heart pumps — but no heart — for four months between the transplants.
Last spring D'Zhana and her parents learned she had an enlarged heart that was too weak to sufficiently pump blood. They traveled from their home in Clinton, S.C. to Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami for a heart transplant.
But her new heart didn't work properly and could have ruptured so surgeons removed it two days later.
And they did something unusual, especially for a young patient: They replaced the heart with a pair of artificial pumping devices that kept blood flowing through her body until she could have a second transplant.
Dr. Peter Wearden, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh who works with the kind of pumps used in this case, said what the Miami medical team managed to do "is a big deal."
The pumps, ventricular assist devices, are typically used with a heart still in place to help the chambers circulate blood. With D'Zhana's heart removed, doctors at Holtz Children's Hospital crafted substitute heart chambers using a fabric and connected these to the two pumps.
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2 comments:
Wow what an amazing story. The human body is just amazing and I believe that a person's will to live and positive attitude has a lot to do with how their situation will turn out. This young girls life is changed forever and she is lucky to be able to tell her story. It is amazing to me that it has taken so long for her to find a heart...my belief is that we should all be organ donors if we are able to. Great blog, very touching and amazing!
This story is absolutely incredible, what a miracle! It's amazing to hear stories like these especially on people of such a young age. The whole start of her situation was obvioualy very unfortunate but the fight she put up, and the belief the medical personnel had in her is so powerful and touching. The fact that it takes so long when someone needs a vital organ is terrible, but on the other side of things, the way her doctors did above and beyond everything in their power to make her better is wonderful. Awesome blog!
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