Family rejoices on 10th anniversary of heart transplant

By Brandy Chandler

The Highland County Press

Before she was even a year old, Lauryn Gibson had been through more than most people will face in a lifetime. Now, 10 years later, she has reached a milestone of health and survival, and was rewarded with what her family called “a trip of a lifetime.”

In December 2001, when she was three days shy of her first birthday, Lauryn received a new heart.

In January 2012, the Make A Wish Foundation sent Lauryn and her family to Paradise Island in the Bahamas, where she was able to fulfill her dream of swimming with dolphins in the ocean.

“With other kids, they usually do it much earlier, but I wanted her to wait so she would remember it forever,” said Lauryn’s mother, Heather Gibson. “When you’re younger, you don’t have as many vivid memories. So we did it for the 10th anniversary. When it comes to transplants, the 10-year mark is a very big deal.”

When the Make A Wish representatives came to the Gibson home to plan the trip, with her mom and dad, Heather and Chet, and two younger sisters, Lilli, 3, and Farah, 4, Lauryn, who loves animals and wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up, wanted to swim with the dolphins.

The foundation provided passports for the family, a limo to the airport, a hotel stay near the Port Columbus airport the night before their flight, and nearly a weeklong stay at a resort in the Bahamas, and spending money for souvenirs.

Gibson said the journey the family has been on, from the birth of a seemingly healthy baby girl 11 years ago, to the palatial hotel resort, is a road that has been paved with prayers.

“She was born on time on her due date, and was a healthy, eight-pound baby,” Gibson said. “When she was six weeks old, she got sick. We initially thought it was the flu, but she wasn’t getting better.”

By the time doctors figured out what was wrong, Lauryn was in full congestive heart failure.

“She was care-flighted to Children’s Hospital (in Cincinnati), and was on life support,” Gibson said.

Lauryn was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, which means that she had an enlarged heart.

“She had a heart the size of an 18-month-old baby,” Gibson said. “Her heart couldn’t pump. She was on life support for a few days, and she gradually started getting better.”

With the prognosis showing that a heart transplant might be the only line of treatment, Gibson said that she waited to put her on the transplant list, hoping and praying that her baby might get better.

“I wasn’t ready to list her,” Gibson said. “Her heart function got better and better, and then she plateaued at 19 percent. Then she was on the transplant list for 278 days. They told me that we would be back at the hospital a lot, and that she wouldn’t hit all her milestones that children normally do, but she did.

“We never had to hospitalize her. I kept her at home and I stayed in isolation with her. She wasn’t able to get her immunizations. Her growth suffered more than anything. We would go to the store and she would be walking, and people couldn’t believe it because she was so tiny. Even now, she’s very tiny for her age.”

In the months of waiting, Gibson said they never prayed for a heart, knowing that would mean a baby would be taken away from a family.

“We always prayed that she would get better,” Gibson said.

The donor of Lauryn’s heart was 15 months old or less, and Gibson said. Because of the age, the donation “would have been the result of a traumatic car accident or shaken baby syndrome. Just, with everything combined, we’ve never met the donor family. I couldn’t imagine being in their position. I came so close to losing her ... I just couldn’t imagine what they must have gone through.

But we got the call in December, and she got her heart on the 11th. We had her first birthday party there, with her birthday cake, right there in the ICU.”

Years later, Lauryn, now a fifth-grader at Buckskin Elementary, has shown no sign of rejection.

The family still has lots of trips to Cincinnati for regular testings, although Gibson said that it has gotten a lot easier over the years.

“The only way to test for rejection is biopsies of the actual heart,” she said. “For a while, we were doing them every week, then every two weeks. Now, it’s yearly, with lab work quarterly. You put a lot of miles on your car.”

While Lauryn has to miss school a lot during winter months to avoid contact with sick children, Gibson said that she has been healthy, and active.

“We have to be careful because chickenpox could be fatal for her if we don’t watch it,” Gibson said. “We would have to get a booster within 24-48 hours. It was worse when she was younger, but she has had really good teachers who really keep and eye out if anything is amiss.”

Lauryn was involved in competitive cheerleading for several years, although extra curricular activities have been limited to avoid unnecessary contact with communicable illnesses. Swimming, however, remains a favorite activity.

“Swimming is her big thing,” Gibson said. “That was another reason she wanted to do the dolphins. She loves animals and (the cable channel) Animal Planet. We have horses, and cats and dogs, and she said she wants to be a veterinarian. She’s very athletic. We were worried at first, but they told us that it’s a regular heart.

“The heart is not the problem. It’s keeping the body fooled into thinking that it’s her heart – that’s the hard part. With physical activity, we’ve had no complications with anything like that. You don’t always get a second chance. With Lauryn, it was truly divine intervention.”

Because of everything they have gone through, Gibson said they were grateful for the trip. It not only allowed Lauryn the opportunity to live out a dream, but it was a trip that her younger sisters could enjoy as well.

“Everyone was so friendly,” Gibson said. “The hotel staff members always remembered the girls’ names. It was 85 degrees the entire time, and they got to feed sting rays and sea turtles by hand.”

I can’t say enough about the Make a Wish Foundation, and the organizations who help kids,” Gibson said. “It means so much, especially when you’re in the midst of dealing with it all. You can’t think about fun, and it really makes a difference to the siblings, because they make sacrifices too. They can be a kid again.”
 
In raising a child who has been through a traumatic illness, Gibson said it’s a balance to treat them, “just like a normal kid,” and to make sure other siblings don’t feel like one child is receiving more of mom and dad’s attention. While her younger sisters were not born yet when Lauryn was dealing with her major operation, she has an older half-brother, Shane, who remembers what his little sister had to go through.

The Gibson family participates in donor drives to try to help others provide a second chance for other families.

“We’ve worked to raise awareness, and there are a lot of people who say they have signed up to be donors who were not donors before,” Gibson said.