For 28-year-old Jessica Manning from New Zealand, hospital visits are the norm. She has had 200 surgeries since she was three years old. Because the woman was born with only half a heart, reports the New York Post.
When she was born, doctors diagnosed several life-threatening heart defects. The doctors gave her only a small chance of survival.
But many heart surgeries followed, which saved her life. “My biggest heart surgery was my Fontan operation, which connects the heart to the pulmonary artery with a tube, which was almost like a reconstruction of my heart,” Jessica says. This enabled her to experience her youth.
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However, heart failure followed, and her heart could only work with five percent of its function. She again spent three months in the hospital. Then, at 25, came her life-changing surgery. Jessica underwent heart and liver transplants after receiving a pacemaker and emergency lung surgery a few years earlier.
“The recovery was very tough as I lost all my muscle memory and had to relearn how to move,” she explained. Although her body accepted the new organs, four weeks after her transplant, Jessica went into cardiac arrest. But that didn’t stop her from fighting on. Since then, no further complications have occurred.
Eventually, she offered her heart and liver to a New Zealand university for research. But because they only needed a small part of the organ, she was able to have the remaining part back. On TikTok, she shows her old heart encased in a plastic bag. But as that it is hardly recognizable.
“I was born with only half a heart, so my heart was originally supposed to be smaller than my fist,” she explains. “But because it was so damaged, it was really swollen and taking up my entire chest cavity.”
