Getting back to living life

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September 20, 2010 - 12:00 AM

Moran native, 21, gets new heart

MORAN — On Saturday, not quite two weeks after receiving a heart transplant at St. Luke’s hospital in Kansas City, Moran native Kayla Norman was out doing what any other healthy 21-year-old would be: Enjoying Moran Day festivities with her family.
The remarkable recovery reflects the way Norman feels after the procedure: “I feel better than I have for the past two years,” she said.
Heart disease isn’t unheard of in Norman’s family — her mom, Leslie, died in 2004 of congestive heart failure at age 38; and her maternal grandfather had died of the same thing when her mother was in high school, Norman said.
Norman had appeared healthy throughout her youth, to the point of being active in sports while at Marmaton Valley High School.
Trouble started in June 2007, about a month after graduation from MVHS.
“I started fainting,” Norman said, for no apparent reason. Her heart was racing, “but by the time we got to the hospital, it would be done throwing its fits.”
After a number of such occurrences, Kayla “spent a week at the heart hospital and they mapped her heart,” her dad, Darin Norman, said.
“It was an arrhythmia,” he said of the final diagnosis, which called for placement of a heart defibrillator to even out the electrical impulses in Kayla’s heart.
Before the device was implanted, her heart “would be at 200 beats per minute on one side, and normal on the other,” Darin said.
Kayla said she “felt fine” after the regulating device was implanted in April of 2008, then “in May of this year I got sick.”
“She couldn’t keep food down,” Darin said. This went on for a couple months.
Kayla, a nursing student at Emporia State University, thought it was stomach flu. Her dad thought otherwise and insisted she go to a doctor.
In mid-July, tests were run at Newman Regional Health in Emporia.
While at home awaiting the results, “I had a stroke,” Kayla stated matter-of-factly,
“Her friends rushed her to the hospital,” Darin said.
By the time Darin, an employee at Gates Rubber, arrived at the hospital, “she looked fine,” he said.
“Within an hour and a half of the stroke, I was functioning better,” Kayla noted.
Further tests, however, showed Kayla’s heart was functioning at only 10 percent of normal capacity.
She was immediately referred to Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart and Vascular Institute in Kansas City, Mo., as a candidate for a heart transplant.
After eight days of tests — “they have to evaluate every system in your body,” Kayla noted — she was sent home on intravenous medication. On Aug. 31, she was placed on a waiting list for a new heart.
“We were told we could be called tomorrow or in six months,” Kayla said. “One family we met had been waiting for 970 days,” Darin noted.
So they were a bit surprised when, less than a week later, the call came about an available heart.

FAMILY MEMBERS quickly converged in support, including Kayla’s sister, Brooke Norman, Olathe, and her aunt and uncle, Angela and Brent Thummel of Derby. Hospital administrators, Darin said, “want you to have a lot of family structure and support. That helps” in recovery.
At the hospital, Kayla was asked to write a letter, not too personal, to be given to the donor family “when they’re ready to read it,” she said.
No personal information about the heart’s origin was given to the Normans, except that it came from someone under the age of 35, Darin said, noting “They don’t like to put hearts from older people into younger patients.”
Surgery was expected to take four to five hours. After 1 1/2 hours, the doctors came out and told Kayla’s family she was done.
Her surgeon, Dr. Michael Borkon, “is really picky about what kind of scar he leaves on younger people,” Darin said. As a result, there is only a slight line where Kayla’s sternum had to be split to allow the procedure.
“I’m healing nicely,” she said. “They say I will be back 150 percent.”
Still, Kayla must take 30 pills a day — antirejection drugs she will need to take for the rest of her life. “It’s worth it,” she said. “It’s a small price to pay for a new heart.”
In addition, she must limit her exposure to large crowds — “I have to wear a mask when I go out” — and must take the year off school.
“I’m in the nursing program and I can’t lift anything or be around sick people,” she said. With only practicals left in her schooling, time off was the only option.
“A simple cold could be fatal to her,” Darin noted of the sensitivity of her immune system as her body adapts to the new organ.
So, for a year, Kayla is living with her aunt, uncle and their family in Derby. She returns weekly to St. Luke’s for biopsies of the heart tissue.
Those will taper as time passes and the heart is not rejected, she said, eventually becoming simple blood draws after a year or so.
“This whole thing has been harder on my family than it has been on me,” Kayla said.
In addition, she noted, “I would like to (meet the donor family) some day,” Kayla noted. “A letter can only say so much. You’d like to thank them in person for somethiing like this.”
Already, though, she is making use of her new experience to help others.
While still at the hospital, Kayla met with a 19-year-old athlete from Chanute, Jeremy Gant, who was being evaluated for placement on the transplant list.
Her dad said he thought it might help if Gant saw that someone his own age had undergone the same thing, and came out OK.
“I’m very lucky,” she said. “I’m ready to get back to life.”

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