“Since heart transplant (donor) must go to heaven, I hope it will be transplanted quickly… I couldn’t bear to think of that.”
A precious child born after three miscarriages. However, Kim Ri-ha (2)’s heart was unusual from the inside of her mother’s belly. Because her heart beat faster than the others.
Even after she was born, Li Ha’s heart was different from her other children. With medication she tried to somehow get her health back, but her situation did not improve. In the end, on April 7 of last year, Liha started living in the pediatric intensive care unit at Asan Hospital in Seoul after her ’14 months’.
Looking back, she couldn’t even afford to be admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit. Dilated cardiomyopathy, which her Leah suffered from, is a cardiomyopathy in which her heart enlarges and reduces its function. If drug treatment does not work, the only option left is ‘pediatric heart transplant’, and there are only ‘5’ medical institutions in Korea that can perform pediatric transplant. Recalling her then, Riha’s mother said:
She said, “Among the names stored in my cell phone토토사이트, I called anyone who was related to Seoul even at dawn. I need some help. She asks for Riha to be admitted to her intensive care unit. For me living in Daejeon, it seemed like an impossible mission to find a hospital where I could be admitted.”
It’s been a month since Riha went in and out of the intensive care unit and general ward. Another mission was given to a child who had not yet experienced the world properly. On May 4 of last year, he was fitted with a VAD ( ventricular assist device) the size of a small refrigerator. Bard is a device that injects blood directly from the ventricle with reduced contraction function after injecting a small artificial pump into the ventricle and ejects it to the next stage.
To wait for a pediatric heart donor to be found, Lee Ha put on a bard. Choi Eun-seok, professor of pediatric cardiac surgery at Seoul Asan Medical Center, who was Riha’s primary care physician, said, “Especially in small children, the probability of a donor heart coming out even if they start waiting for a heart transplant is very low.” I was going to do it,” he said.
Riha’s mother remembers this period as the most difficult time. Aside from her inexhaustible wait, it was difficult for her to see a child who couldn’t drink water to her heart’s content. In addition, he had to hold the child ’24 hours’ because of her uneasy mind, because even if the bard wire connected to Liha was twisted, she could fall into a dangerous situation.
“Dilated cardiomyopathy shouldn’t strain the heart, so I could only drink about 60ml of water a day. Leha always pestered me for water, and I must have been very thirsty and thirsty.”
The long awaited heart transplant news has finally arrived. A heart donor matching Lee Ha’s blood type, which was her type O, appeared after six months. She was a lucky case. In fact, a team led by Professor Jinyoung Song of the Department of Pediatrics at Samsung Seoul Hospital reviewed the records of 254 pediatric patients under the age of 18 who were registered on the waiting list for heart transplant at Samsung Medical Center, Seoul Asan Hospital, and Seoul National University Children’s Hospital from January 2000 to January 2020. Of these, only 145 received a heart transplant. There were 66 pediatric patients who died while waiting. That equates to one in four deaths.
On December 2 of last year, Lee Ha was finally discharged from the hospital. She had been admitted to Asan Hospital in Seoul for ‘about 9 months’. Even so, her mother could not smile brightly. She said that the child who transplanted her heart to Riha meant that she had died, and she knew that there were still many children waiting for her heart transplant. Her mother’s voice was already crying at the reporter’s request for her last comment.
“I was really lucky,” she said. A child hospitalized at Severance Hospital has been waiting for a donor for 11 months. On the other hand, a heart transplant must go to heaven, so one life can save another new life. Every day I am praying for the child and her family who gave life and did not forget.”