I was born healthy in Winnipeg, Canada in 1970.  When I was three days’ old, I got myocarditis, a virus that infected my heart and gave me an enlarged left ventricle and a heart murmur; I likely got it because one of the maternity ward nurses had a cold.

I was sick as an infant but obviously do not remember any of that.  I had to take one medicine as a young child and saw the pediatric cardiologist only once a year.  In 1977, my family moved to Birmingham, AL, and I was healthy while growing up.

While in high school, I began to get two kinds of arrhythmias.  Like a typical teenager, I did not want to tell my parents, because I thought they would curtail my involvement in the marching band.  However, my pediatrician discovered one of my arrhythmias and soon enough, I was seeing an adult cardiologist at UAB (the University of Alabama at Birmingham) and undergoing numerous tests.  Eventually, my doctor put me on two medicines and sent me off to college with the admonition that I could do everything but the strenuous gym classes.

At Emory University, I acted like a “regular” college student, sometimes going to bed at 2 AM and waking up at 6 AM to study.  After my sophomore year, I went to see my UAB cardiologist for my annual visit.  He informed me that my heart was gradually getting worse.  I would die before reaching old age, in fact probably before I was 30.  I could not have children because the physical strain of pregnancy would kill me, and I might need a heart transplant one day.

To be honest, the part about the heart transplant went in one ear and out the other; it seemed like science fiction to me. I went back to Emory that fall, trying hard not to think about what I had been told.

Flash forward to the fall of 1991, my senior year.  I found myself out of breath walking around campus. I attributed this to the fact that Emory has a very hilly campus and that I was overweight and out of shape. 

Over Thanksgiving Break that year, I went with some of my family to Toronto and Montreal, to visit both a graduate school and relatives.  While there, I felt lousy.  I felt nauseous all the time and could not breathe while lying down flat. Finally, when we were at my aunt’s house for brunch before flying out of Montreal, I turned to one of my brothers, who was a medical resident at the time, and said, “I can’t breathe.”  I ended up being rushed in an ambulance to a local hospital.  I was in heart failure and probably had been for weeks.

Heart failure does not mean that my heart stopped beating.  My heart was so big and thus beating so weakly that my lungs were filling with fluid; it was as if I was drowning internally.

The doctors gave me Laisix (a diuretic) and potassium and kept me overnight.  I flew home- to Birmingham, not Atlanta- as a regular passenger on Delta the next day.  Over the phone, I convinced my doctor to stay at home one more night and take another dose of the medicines. 

I went into UAB the following day.  The tests revealed that my heart was THREE times too big. On the X-ray, my heart went from chest wall to chest wall.  My doctor told me that my only option was to be evaluated for a heart transplant.  I was very upset to hear this, because I knew that if I failed the evaluation, I had no other option. 

As it turned out, I had a very quick evaluation. Unlike many people who are waiting for a heart or other organ, I did not get to go home and wait for weeks, months, or years; I was too sick.  In fact, when my new cardiologist and the rest of the transplant team told me they were putting me on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) national wait list, I asked him, “How long can I live with my own heart?”  he replied, “Karen, you can live 20 years or you can die tonight.”  I was 21 years old when hearing this.

I was admitted to UAB on a Tuesday, got on the list that Saturday night, and had my transplant on Monday. Because I was about to die and because of matching factors such as body size, tissue type, and blood type, I only had to wait two days.  I was incredibly fortunate to receive my heart transplant on December 9, 1991.  I am one of a handful of UAB heart transplant recipients to have lived so long.

I almost died when I was a 21-year-old; but, thanks to the generosity of a 17-year-old African-American male and his family, I am still alive over 31 years later.

Since having a heart transplant did not bring me enough attention, I “decided” to have another unique medical problem.  In 2010, I had a corpectomy and fusion of my C7 vertebra because I had developed an aneurysmal bone cyst over a giant cell tumor, a one-in-a-million benign tumor.  My neck now contains a titanium cage filled with donor bone behind a titanium plate.  So, I am a double recipient- an organ AND tissue recipient.

That still was not enough, so I had a tricuspid valve replacement later that same year. Yes, I have a replacement valve inside a transplanted heart. Then in 2021, I broke both elbows, suffering a “terrible triad” injury in the left which required a partial elbow replacement. Altogether, I feel like the Bionic Woman.

I was UAB heart transplant surgery #266; that number is far above 1,000 now.  But, I was lucky.

When I started giving my transplant talk in the mid-1990s, around 60,000 people were on the UNOS list.  As I write this, 103,575 people are waiting in the U.S. for some kind of organ; over 17 of them a day will die while waiting. It is so important that one sign one’s license or donor card and talk to one’s family about organ donation.  Share your life; share your decision. 

It is my honor and pleasure to finally participate in the Transplant Games with Team Alabama after all these years.  I cannot contain my excitement that my town, Birmingham, will be the host for this international competition and celebration of life!

It would mean the world to me, now that you have read my story, to please contribute to my fundraising page. Your contribution will go to support my and Team Alabama’s participating in the Games, but it will also go to support Donate Life Alabama’s organ donation education throughout the state, which means more lives saved.

Thank you in advance for all of your support and love.