PEABODY — Sharon Kidney used to turn her cell phone off when she went to bed, but that changed last year when the 49-year-old Lynn native learned she needed a heart transplant.
The timing couldn’t have been better.
Last week, she got the lifesaving call from doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital that they had a heart with her name on it. A few hours later she was in the operating room.
“Doctors said the surgery was a success, they’re happy with the results and her color is back,” said Philip G. Roy, her father who is traveling up from his Florida retirement home with his wife to care for their daughter. “She’s a new person, they told me. I can’t believe it.”
Eight hours before surgery in an interview with The Daily Item, Kidney said she keeps the phone on 24/7.
“When I get the call, I have to be at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in three hours,” she said.
The property manager at Simon Cos. in Braintree was born with transposition of the great arteries (TGA). It’s a serious but rare heart defect in which the two main arteries leaving the heart are reversed, according to the Mayo Clinic. The condition creates a shortage of oxygen in blood flowing to the rest of the body. Without an adequate supply of oxygen-rich blood, the body can’t function.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates about 1,250 babies, or 1 in 3,300 babies are born with TGA annually in the U.S.
There are about 3,408 heart transplants a year at a cost of $1.3 million each. The survival rate is 88 percent after the first year, and 75 percent after five years, according to the Mayo Clinic. “That sounds pretty good to me,” said Kidney. ““My parents were told I wouldn’t live to see age 5, and I was recently told I’d live to age 50.”
Her earliest memory that something was wrong was at 3 when she recalled being on a hospital table.
“There was a very bright light shining on me and the doctor was about to put a huge needle into my neck,” she said. “I was thrashing around and screaming.”
The needle may have been for what’s called a cardiac catheterization, she said, used to diagnose and treat heart conditions. During the procedure, a long thin tube is inserted in an artery or vein in your neck, groin, or arm and threaded through your blood vessels to your heart.
Aside from frequent visits to MGH as a child, Kidney knew something wasn’t right. She was easily tired by playground games.
“I always wanted to keep up with the other kids,” she said. “I remember when I was in elementary school trying to dance or bowl and I was just terrible because I would quickly be out of breath. I thought it was because I lacked the skills, but my dad eventually told me it was a heart condition.”
The fact that Kidney doesn’t look like she has an ailment, has made living with it more challenging. She always tried to appear normal, she said, because it’s not evident by looking at her that she suffers from a condition.
“When I can’t keep up, people are like ‘What’s the problem?’ So I’d keep trying and it would get worse,” she said.
Last year, her doctors considered implanting a defibrillator or a pacemaker in her chest, but the risks outweigh the benefits, she said.
Kidney, who attended St. Pius V School, St. Mary’s High School, and Bay State College, could be out of the hospital this week, Roy said, but the medical bills are expected to pile up. While heart transplant surgery is generally covered by insurance, life saving medicines typically require a patient contribution.
The four anti-rejection drugs are expensive, and the co-pay is $2,500 a month, he said. As a result, the family launched a fundraising goal of $100,000. So far, they have raised $11.575. Tax-deductible donations in her name can be made to the National Foundation for Transplants. To donate online go to: give.transplants.org/goto/sharonkidney.
To send your gift by mail, make checks payable to NFT Massachusetts Transplant Fund, 5350 Poplar Ave., Suite 850, Memphis, TN 38119. Please be sure to write “in honor of Sharon Kidney” on the envelope and on the check memo line.