After a series of tests and a few hours of restless sleep , Jessica says that her surgeon and the CTI Surgical Director for Thoracic Transplant Charles Hoopes , MD , told her that she would be the recipient . “ I was the best match because I ’ m five feet tall , and the donor was a 14-year-old boy ,” she says .
“ Jessica had bad end-stage pulmonary hypertension ,” Dr . Hoopes says . “ Her body couldn ’ t get blood from the right side of her heart to the left side , causing cardiogenic shock .” This can result in damage to the kidneys , liver , and other organs .
The transplant went smoothly , and Jessica ’ s TikTok videos chronicle her initial time in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and her joy in being reunited with the nursing team in the Heart and Lung Transplant Intensive Care Unit ( HTICU ). “ I spent two months with them in the fall , and I call them my second family ,” she says . “ The HTICU is my second home .”
While Jessica was in the HTICU , Juana was busy securing a nearby apartment , since transplant patients are required to live near UAB for 100 days following their discharge . “ We see the lung team every Monday and the heart team every Thursday ,” Jessica says . “ I have EKGs , echocardiograms , chest X-rays , labs , and biopsies to make sure there ’ s no rejection .”
Throughout it all , Jessica has been mindful of her donor ’ s sacrifice . “ Someone lost a loved one so I could be with mine ,” she says . For that reason , Jessica ’ s siblings have told her that they are determined to be organ donors when they get their drivers ’ licenses . “ They saw how organ donation helped me , and I educated them about how it could help others ,” she says .
Dr . Hoopes underscores the need for donors in the southeast . “ We have many people who die and meet the criteria for organ donation but do not become donors ,” he says . “ Organ donation is a way to take a tragic situation and have something good come out of it .”
PATIENT STORY :
HCV + ORGAN TRANSPLANT PROGRAM EXTENDS TO HEART AND LUNG PATIENTS
On the afternoon of April 25 , 2018 , Colin Tucker felt as though a railroad spike was being shoved through his chest .
Tucker was taken to his local hospital , where doctors found four blockages in his heart . He was having a heart attack , and 99 percent of the main artery that supplies blood to the largest portion of his heart was blocked . After months of unsuccessful treatments , procedures and medications , Tucker was sent to UAB Medicine , where he was placed on the transplant list and received a ventricular assist device to pump blood from the chambers of his heart to the rest of his body .
Just over two years later , Tucker became the UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute ’ s first heart transplant recipient from a hepatitis
ORGANS – HEART
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