38-year-old has had 3 hearts: ‘It’s a third chance’

By Laura Williamson

Melanie Wickersheim has no memory of the first time her heart gave her trouble. She was an infant, and her pediatric myocarditis – an inflammation of the muscular walls of the heart – resolved before she was old enough to know anything had ever been wrong.

She spent the first 10 years of her life like any other kid in Los Angeles, believing she was perfectly healthy. Until suddenly, she wasn’t. She couldn’t hold down food. She felt so weak, she could barely walk. “I remember trying to walk across a parking lot. I had to stop at every light pole to take a breath, panting for air,” she said. Read the story in American Heart Association News.