A Heart Transplant Survivor Story
Memoir
Date Published: December 12, 2023
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Darla Calvet is a thirty-nine-year-old working mom whose life turns upside
down when she is diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Suddenly, fear
threatens her dreams for the future as doctors’ appointments replace
her daily routines and she realizes she may not live to see her daughters
grow up. After dying twice while waiting for a new heart, Darla begins to
understand her own resiliency—her heart may be weak, but her mind
refuses to give up.
My Life in Stitches: A Heart Transplant Survivor Story is a candid, witty
account of one woman's determination to transform a devastating prognosis
into an inspiring fight for survival. Darla’s story offers insight
into the complex world of medicine with a dose of humor about her challenges
and victories as a heart transplant patient. In this sensitive, thorough,
and informative debut, Calvet brings compassion and gentle wisdom to a
difficult subject in hopes of demystifying the uncertainties that inevitably
accompany long-term, life-threatening medical decisions.
EXCERPT:
EXACTLY SIXTY-TWO DAYS after
I had fainted in the Scripps Green hospital room, I woke up in complete
darkness. My heart raced. I had no idea where I was or what happened to me
since I passed out on the day I was admitted. I was unable to see without my
contacts or glasses and tried to speak but could not emit a sound. For those first few moments,
I thought perhaps maybe I was in some kind of purgatory and that this was my
eternal bus stop. I felt a distinct heaviness as I tried to move my legs. I reached
down around my abdomen and detected the LVAD unit, with a drive line going
through my abdomen and its two large lithium batteries attached to my body. The
LVAD surgery had occurred. But when, why, and how had it happened? I sat in
darkness, vainly searching for the remote control and the button to call the
night shift nurse.
I felt a weird combination of
relief and confusion. I could decipher from the blurry digits on the clock that it was about 4:00 a.m. I had no
idea what day, month, or year it was. I knew from the LVAD installation that
some time must have passed, but how much? I must have woken up during a
skeletal night shift with very few nurses in
the hospital unit. I swung my head as far around as I could, only to see the
outlines and lights of seventeen machines in the room, all helping to keep me
alive. I immediately started to panic. I seemed to be more machine than human
with all of the leads and tubes running in and out of my body. I was also
intubated and unable to speak, which was terrifying. I could discern from the
many machines attached to me that I was also in the Cardiac Intensive Care
Unit, known as the CICU. This was where the gravely ill cardiac patients were
sent by their teams.
“Stay calm,” I told myself.
Someone had to be around . . . somewhere. The heavy blackout curtains were
drawn around my glass cube room, making me feel claustrophobic. After a long
wait, the curtains were flung open by Patricia, my morning nurse, who was starting
her shift. She smiled sweetly, saying, “Oh, good. You are awake. We have been
waiting for you to wake up.” I was confused and had no idea how I had arrived
at my current state in the hospital bed. At that time, the CICU was located in
the basement of the Scripps Green Hospital Facility, next to the morgue. It was
not exactly a cheery place. I heard some orderlies joking to each other that it
was “death’s waiting room.”
Realizing that I could not
speak, Patricia took my hand and spoke softly, “You are okay. You have been in
a medically induced coma for over two months. During that time, we needed to
perform emergency open heart surgery and save your life by installing the LVAD, which
you have probably noticed is attached to your body.” I shuddered and pulled the
sheets up around my neck. God only knew how close I had come to death. I was
about to find out.
While I was very grateful and
relieved to be alive, I thought of my family. How had my husband coped during
my absence with our two young adult girls? How had they dealt with this
horrible situation? My eldest, Claire, was a high school senior. My youngest,
Annie, was now a high school freshman. It made me sad to think about missing
the important events that were going on in their young lives.
My next thought was my job.
What had happened to it? Had someone finally disclosed how sick I had been
while continuing to work? It gave me pause to consider that this had happened
during my absence. I did not know that my husband had requested a one-year
leave of absence after I fainted at the hospital. I was grateful he did this on
my behalf. During my last days at my job, my ego kept me from seeking support
even as I struggled to walk a few hundred feet from the parking lot to the
elevator up to my office.
A few moments later, Nurse
Patricia returned with my “breakfast.” It was a peach
colored
container of liquid protein that looked like cement. I watched in awe as she
said, “Down the hatch” and poured it into my feeding tube. “Can you taste
anything?” she asked. I shook my head “no.” The only sensation I felt was the
cold sludge making its way down the feeding tube in the back of my throat. I
had lost quite a bit of weight during my two-month nap. Thirty-four pounds to
be exact. My body, which had always been very muscular, was now atrophied and
weak.
The LVAD was the third device
to be surgically placed into my body after the AICD defibrillator and pacemaker. It cost over a
million dollars to install. Now, my job of learning to live with it began.
There would be no swimming in the near future. The eight pounds of life-saving
state-of-the-art medical equipment that was now part of my body would require
ongoing care. I had no idea at that time the battles that had taken place to
get the LVAD device installed. I would have certainly died without it.
The next lesson I learned as
a transplant patient is: Your medical
team must fight to save your life.
Even with your insurance company. You do not have
the luxury of time on your side.
About the Author
A heart transplant survivor, Dr. Darla Calvet won a gold medal for ballroom
dance in the 2022 Transplant Games of America. Currently, she serves as the
vice president of the board of directors for the Southern California
Transplant Games of America team. She is also the CEO of Blue Tiger, Inc., a
strategic planning consultancy. A doctor of education, Calvet holds degrees
from Claremont Graduate University, San Diego State University, and the
University of California, Berkeley. She lives in San Diego, California, with
her husband Pat and their French bulldog Quinn, and she is the proud mom of
two adult daughters, Claire and Annie.
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