Stephanie
Zimmerman
And her tragic story about his child.
Knowing there were risks to having a child, she and her husband, John, welcomed their son Abel into the world five years ago. Thankfully, mom and Abel were doing just fine. But as the years went by, Stephanie began experiencing increasing fatigue. Upon evaluation by her doctor in Atlanta, Georgia, she recommended a mitral and aortic valve repair, and she successfully received treatment at Cleveland Clinic in December 2007. After returning to Atlanta, it became clear Stephanie’s condition was much bigger than the valve repair, and she found herself back at the doctor with intolerable fatigue, shortness of breath and fluid retention. “The repair unmasked the fact that the chemotherapy drug I had as a child did damage to the left ventricular muscle,” Stephanie recounts. “Once the valves were repaired, the left ventricle did not have a ‘pop off’ valve so to speak, and I spiraled into heart failure.” Unfortunately, Stephanie was told she was in heart failure and the only option looked to be a transplant. Her husband, John, knew this was a major surgery and recovery would take a long time given how very sick she was entering into the transplant. Their preference would have been to have the transplant in their home city; however, after John had thoroughly researched the top transplant centers in the nation and desiring the very best for his wife, they concluded that the Cleveland Clinic was THE center for them based on reputation, outcomes, and clinical experience with complex cases. They needed to act quickly, and Stephanie was soon transported to Cleveland via life flight. Randall Starling, MD, head of heart failure and cardiac transplant medicine at Cleveland Clinic, was on call when she arrived and informed the family that she may only live a few hours – she must be put on the transplant list immediately. “At that point, I was very scared. I knew things were going quickly,” Stephanie recalls. “I also knew there might not be a heart available.” Because of the damage radiation had done to her chest as a child, traditional methods of putting her on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) to provide oxygen to her heart and lungs were impossible. But, not giving up, cardiothoracic surgeon Gonzalo Gonzalez-Stawinski, MD, tried a revolutionary ECMO approach through the groin, and it was a success. Within 12 hours, they found a heart that was a perfect match. Cardiothoracic surgeon Nicholas Smedira, MD, performed the successful, nearly 12-hour transplant surgery. “When I woke up, I could feel the heart beat and it was so strong,” Stephanie recalls. “Before the transplant, I couldn’t feel my heart beat because it was so weak – an inefficient.” Experiencing highs and lows, Stephanie spent 12 weeks at Cleveland Clinic. Today, she and her family are just over four months out from her transplant surgery and doing very well. Ultimately, she credits the love of family and friends, the hard work of all the doctors, nurses and everyone else their daily encouragement. While recovering, her son Abel would pray, “Dear God, please let my mom speak again and let her give me hugs.” Stephanie is currently doing both as often as possible. “I’ve been doing great and I’m up and walking and doing things that are normal again – like last week watching my son learn how to ride his bike without training wheels. I’m so thankful I didn’t miss that!” Stephanie also plans to get involved with organ donor families or recipients and work to raise awareness about future health complications for survivors of childhood cancer.
Please help us to treat people and kids like Stephanie Zimmerman and donate organs, please donate this organ or what you can.
Pros and Cons of it!
ONE organ donor can save up to EIGHT lives. There are nearly 115,000 men, women and children waiting for an organ transplant in the U.S. By registering to become an organ donor, you can help save lives! For the transplant recipient, it is a second chance at life. For some, an organ transplant means no longer having to be dependent on costly routine treatments to survive. It allows many recipients to return to a normal lifestyle. For the family of the deceased donor, they feel a sense of goodness that came from a tragedy – that if the organs are transplanted into a young, deserving person, then their loss was not in vain. Donor families take some consolation in knowing that some part of their loved one continues in life. Living Donation – It is possible to donate organs while you are still alive. Living people can donate a kidney, portions of the liver, lung, pancreas and intestines, as well as blood, and go on to live healthy lives. Most often it is relatives who do living tissue donation. It is possible, however, to register for completely humanitarian reasons and give organs to a stranger. qs Families might be confused by the fact that donor bodies are often kept on life support while the tissues are removed. Surgeons do not remove any tissues unless the person is brain dead, but they sometimes put the body on a ventilator to keep the heart pumping fresh blood into the tissues to keep them alive long enough to harvest. This is not the same as life, but there is a moment when the ventilator is removed and the heart stops. Another “con” might be that the donor does not usually get to choose who the organs go to, and perhaps an organ will go to someone of a different faith, political viewpoint or temperament than the donor. The donor has to believe that all life is sacred and that anyone who receives the “ultimate gift” of a donor organ will be grateful and be imbued with a sense of gratitude and a desire to pay it forward.
Mexico is in favor of donating organs in the right conditions and precautions.
Pros: Cons:
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