Heart recipient lives 'life to its fullest'

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- Jeni McGirr woke up the morning of May 5, 2005, not feeling well at all.

"I had a cup of coffee, and that didn't help. I thought, 'There's something very wrong,' " said McGirr, now 42.

She didn't know it yet, but she was in the beginning throes of a major heart attack -- one that caused such destruction she would have to find a new heart to keep living.

"I wasn't having chest pains, but I was having hot flashes, and I knew something just wasn't right," McGirr recalled. "I started vomiting and feeling really irritable. I ended up calling 911."

She'd just moved to Anaheim , Calif. , and there was a hospital two-and-a-half minutes from her home. A good thing, given that she "died" -- went "code blue" -- eight times, while doctors tried to halt the heart attack ravaging her body.

"It was so bad they couldn't get me from the ER to the OR," McGirr said. Doctors finally managed to get her to a catheterization lab, where they double-stented her left coronary artery.

"Because of that decision, they were able to save my life," she said. "They weren't sure if I was going to have brain damage or not."

McGirr remained in a coma for a day and a half. Doctors asked her family to gather round, unsure how things would proceed. But she awoke with no brain damage and began two months on different medications intended to help her heart recover. It never did.

"They kept releasing me from the hospital, and I couldn't stay out longer than a day," McGirr said. "I couldn't hold a conversation. I was so weak, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't get off the couch. I had to be transferred from my couch to the bed. I couldn't eat anything. I would throw it up. All my organs were shutting down."

McGirr went on the waiting list for a new heart. Her doctors transferred her to UCLA Medical Center until a donor heart arrived. She lived in critical care with a device in her heart that kept physicians aware of every beat. And she waited. And waited. For months.

"I spent my 40th birthday in the hospital," McGirr said. "There's a lot that goes through your head when you're dying. There's a feeling that you haven't finished everything."

She started getting nervous. She went through four false starts, where doctors would have a heart and begin prepping her for surgery, and then something would fall through.

"On the fifth time, that was the one that I got," McGirr said. "I went down for surgery at 5 p.m., and they started surgery on September 1 and closed me up on the second. Got back to the room at 6 in the morning."

The details of the surgery still fascinate her. Her heart was out of her body for about three hours, with machines keeping her alive.

She doesn't know anything about the donor of her new heart.

McGirr has been lucky since. She's suffered no complications from the transplant, her body accepting the organ without much fuss.

"They are so surprised that this is such a great match," she said. "My doctor says I'm on the least amount of anti-rejection medication than any of his patients has been on."

McGirr is preparing for a cross-country motorcycle ride with a group of other organ recipients and donors. They plan to leave in April. She'll be riding her Harley.

"Life is a lot more precious to me," she said. "I definitely value every moment. Just living life to its fullest."

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