It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago, a single mother named Paula McCammon was staying alive with a mechanical heart awaiting a transplant.
Surprisingly enough, this wasn’t even the first time the single mother had counted on a donor. When she was just 24, she received a donated heart after battling mononucleosis and Epstein-Barr. The deadly combination caused her heart to thicken.
In the spring of 2015, Paula’s donor heart started to fail. The surgeons at University of Washington Medical Center believed a second donor heart would be too dangerous. She went into cardiac arrest a few months later and the team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles decided to set her up with a mechanical heart.
Paula is 1 of only 1,625 people to utilize an artificial heart. The thumping device, which attaches to an external power source, has been reported to keep a patient alive for about 4 years.
Just 16 years after receiving her first donor heart, Paula stayed on the machine for four months, waiting for what would be her second transplant.
Paula can’t believe how much her body has been through. “"It’s amazing how my body came through it all. I was on kidney dialysis. My lungs had been damaged by the mechanical heart. The last two weeks, I was really uncomfortable… I remember waking up almost choking with so much blood.”
Luckily, doctors were able to find a heart and kidney match for Paula. The surgery was a complete success, and she was able to go home with her 6-year-old daughter Emma three months later.
Paula says her new heart “feels a lot stronger than the old one”.
Dr. Wayne Levy, a professor of cardiology at the University of Washington Medical Center, has taken care of Paula since she was 21 years old. He says that the average age of survival for a heart transplant is just 16 or 17 years old, however, she professor says he’s seen plenty of people live much longer than that expectation. He is continuously impressed with Paula’s strength and says she is doing “quite well”.
Paula knows her strength and positive attitude come from her daughter, who is the most important thing in her life. Even though she was advised against having children after having her first transplant, she knew she was meant to be a mom. Emma is actually 1 of only 76 children to be born to a heart transplant patient.
Paula’s incredible resilience is not just a testament to modern medicine, but to the power of positive thinking as well. Her advice to those who are facing tough times is not to “sit and sulk”.
“There is always someone with something worse out there.”