21 Jan, 2010

“Until April 2007, I was a perfectly fit, healthy girl. When I contracted gastroenteritis [aka gastro], everyone in my family had had it, so I wasn’t concerned. But, I’d caught a more severe form of the virus, and, three weeks later, I still had it.

We saw many doctors – all gave temporary treatment, but nothing worked. Then, on Mother’s Day, my body suddenly swelled with fluid, and, within a week, my weight increased from 54kg to 61kg.

At the end of that week, I went to St Vincent’s Hospital [in Sydney], where they found that the muscles in the left side of my heart had become very weak – a rare side effect of the gastro virus.
 
One night at home, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I went to the emergency unit and was put on the waiting list for a heart transplant. Two days later, oxygen stopped going to my brain and my organs began to shut down. I was dying, but I didn’t know it because the doctors were trying to keep me calm.

I was taken to the Intensive Care Unit where they tried to give me a balloon-pump (used to manually pump my own heart until a replacement heart is found), but, as soon as they put that in, all my organs again started to shut down, and I don’t remember the rest.

Broken Heart

I was in an induced coma for two weeks. I went into the balloon-pump surgery on August 24, 2007, and woke up in September, attached to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation [ECMO] machine – a device that does all the work for your heart and lungs.

While we waited for a heart to turn up, I was on the ECMO for almost a year.
It saved my life, and I want people to be more aware of it, but living with it was like being a battery-operated doll. I couldn’t shower, because there was a cord and 3kg battery pack sticking out of an open wound on the left side of my body.

I used to carry it in an Armani bag – I was warned that if someone tried to steal the bag, it could kill me, but I just kept it there. I became really anxious;
I was constantly thinking, ‘Will I have to live with the machine for the rest of my life? How long do I have to live?’.

A new chance

In June 2008, I got a call from the hospital; they had found me a heart. I was in surgery by 5am the next morning. The operation went perfectly and life is so much better now.

Sometimes, though, all the medications and emotions do get me down. I have to take 10 tablets twice a day for the rest of my life, and, when I see my scars, I sometimes get depressed. People don’t realise I’m still a normal person. I actually think I have a younger person’s heart, because I’m more active than I was before.

Organ donation is so important – one person’s parts can save nine lives. It’s the best gift you can give anyone, and I’m so grateful.

I celebrate my transplant date each year, so I have two birthdays now. I’m trying to keep the other person in the heart alive, because they’re keeping me alive, and I think that’s pretty special.”