Even now, years later, Linda Jara’s voice resonates with notes that can only be fully appreciated by certain people – people like her who carry someone else’s heart.
Her tone is filled with gratitude. Awe. Contemplation. Thoughtfulness. Sorrow. Exuberance. The overwhelming feeling that someone else – a total stranger – made the ultimate sacrifice of allowing their own heart to beat in someone else’s chest. Read the full story from the American Heart Association.
At 26, Melody Hickman of Raleigh, North Carolina, was crestfallen. A routine physical detected a problem with her mitral valve. Fixing it required open-heart surgery.
“I knew I would have to be on a heart-lung machine, and the idea of having the incision really bothered me,” she said, noting she often wore V-neck tops. “It was a lot to digest.”
The surgery and recovery went well. Then, 14 years later, the valve needed to be replaced again. That meant a second open-heart surgery. Read more from American Heart Association News.