Caroline- Mom is a Heart Recipient

The mission of organ donation means everything to me, It saved my mom’s life!

My mom was diagnosed with Cardiomyopathy when I was born. She had to get a Pacemaker and Defibrillator when I was just 5 years old in order to help her heart beat normally. This worked really well for a while until her heart started to fail in the summer of 2013. She was placed on the heart transplant list 3 years later at the University of Kentucky.

After being in the hospital for 4 months, she coded, was placed on an Ecmo machine, and was faced with no other option but to get an LVAD (Left ventricular assist device), which was ultimately pumping my mom’s heart for her. My family and I moved to Los Angels that spring for several weeks to wait on Cedar-Sinai’s transplant list, due to their high volume of heart transplants. Unfortunately, this plan was unsuccessful.  However, 7 months later we finally got the call we had all been waiting for from Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

We drove to Nashville, TN from Louisville, KY on November 16, 2019, abruptly leaving a gathering at our home. My mom received her heart transplant on the 17th, after 2 and a half years of waiting.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the selfless individual who decided to be an organ donor. That amazing individual and their family members can rest assured knowing the heart they donated went to a person who lives each day with more passion, more kindness, more determination, and more selflessness than the last. My mom’s heart truly beats for two.