After my husband told me I would need a heart transplant the very first thing I thought of was my family, and I wanted to pray for a new heart right away, however I thought how could I ever pray for a heart, that would mean someone would have to die, I just could not do it.  Well my in-laws heard that I was struggling with this, so they asked their minister to come speak with me and give me some guidance.  When I told him I had great difficulty in praying for a new heart because I could not ask for someone else to die and take them away from their family. The minister said to me that  my praying does not give me  the power to create someones destiny, their destiny has already been set in motion.  After I thought about this, I truly understood that I was praying for the connection of two people.   I would like to thank my in laws who really helped me through my struggle.

Kelly

I hope this helps anyone who may be struggling like I was.  Please feel free to share your stories, comments, or questions!

Annual Checkup:  Well it is getting close to my annual checkup, this is my 5^th year since my transplant and all is going well. Having a little stress, my husband’s company recently downsized and he was laid off. Thankfully he has found employment within a week, however it is in Virginia, so our plan is after our youngest son finishes this school year we will be relocating to Virginia.  Of course I have all the regular nervousness about moving and on top of that I’m very nervous about switching all of my doctors, I will keep coming back to Hahnemann for my annual checkups since we will only be 5 hours away.  I will just miss feeling secure with Hahnemann only being 45 minutes away.  I’m sure other transplants patients have had to make move leaving the security of their transplant team, anyone have any advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

On April 8, 2004 I suffered a spontaneous dissection of my coronary artery, I spent two months in the ICU at Hahnemann University Hospital, and on December 25, 2004 I received a heart transplant.  I started this blog to help women heart transplant recipients communicate with each other as well as their families.  During my time of waiting for a transplant any information that was shared from other recipients was a great help to me and my family, when other recipients shared their stories with me it put me to ease, however, I started to notice most of the individuals sharing their stories where men.  I thought it would be nice to have a way for women to communicate with each other as mothers, wives, daughters, we have many questions, concerns, fears, that we sometime would much rather share/communicate with other women.  So here we are, ask away or comment!  Please check out some very important web sites that I have listed United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), Go Red for Women.