A mother of eight received a heart transplant at the University of Michigan Health on her 48th birthday after years of living with a failing heart.
Rachel Lanham of Jackson is now home for the holidays thanks to the heart procedure which came from a donor who had recently died.
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The transplant used was a process called Donation after Circulatory Death, or DCD.
U-M Health transplanted its first DCD heart in March and has since reached a record number of heart transplants in 2023.
“It was the most amazing moment ever, pure blessing and chance,” said Lanham.
The surgery, which left Lanham hospitalized for over a month, started on the eve of her birthday and ended in the early hours of the day she turned 48.
After their first heart transplant in March, the U-M Health System has since transplanted a record number of hearts, as the DCD technology increases access to this lifesaving surgery.
“Through a variety of innovative strategies and a multidisciplinary institutional commitment, the heart transplant program has grown substantially within the past year, and we anticipate it will continue in this upward trajectory,” said the Surgical Director of the Adult Heart Transplant program at U-M Health, Jonathan Haft, M.D. “This will allow more timely access to lifesaving donor hearts to our patients suffering from end-stage heart failure.”
Lanham said she began feeling constant fatigue and shortness of breath 10 years ago. After her uncle passed suddenly, she decided to get genetic testing, which identified a congenital heart disease called Non-Compaction Cardiomyopathy.
A genetic mutation caused her heart to enlarge, making it more challenging to pump blood.
“My doctors tried to control symptoms with medications, and I knew it was a possibility that it could result in a transplant but that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion,” Lanham said. “My goal was to keep my heart as long as I could.”
The mother of eight said she had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD, placed in her chest in 2012.
The device, which delivers electricity to restore the heart’s rhythm when needed, started shocking her in October 2021.
She said she then had a procedure to treat and eliminate her atrial fibrillation, called Catheter Ablation, but her condition continued to deteriorate.
“This past October, I could no longer function with my family,” Lanham said, who has eight children, six of whom still live at home. “The right side of my heart was too weak for a [mechanical device that assists in pumping], and I was listed on the transplant list.”
Lanham was hospitalized at U-M Health in early November.
Her heart rate shot up; her kidney numbers looked bad. She was “on the precipice” of multi-organ failure.
“At this point, pharmacologic support was not doing enough to help her heart, and we had to escalate to mechanical support,” said Ashraf Abou el ela, M.D., a cardiothoracic transplant surgeon at the U-M Health Frankel Cardiovascular Center.
The medical team started her on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, a technology developed at U-M that is more commonly known as ECMO.
The ECMO pumped oxygenated blood to Lanham’s organs, bypassing the heart and lungs. She was on ECMO for three days before her providers came with the news: they had a heart for her.
“At first, I hardly dared to call and tell people because I thought they might tell me, ‘Never mind,’” Lanham said.
She awoke on Nov. 21, one year older and with a healthy heart in her chest. Lanham’s husband and some of her children were waiting at her bedside.
While she couldn’t make it home for Thanksgiving, Lanham could call in on video to join her family meal.
Nearly three weeks later, she left the hospital to continue her recovery in Jackson.
“Rachel’s story is a great example of how advances in temporary mechanical circulatory support and in organ preservation have changed the landscape for heart transplant candidates and heart allocation,” said Monica Colvin, M.D., M.S., FAHA, medical director of the adult heart transplant program at U-M Health. “Agreeing to a DCD donor increased her chances of expeditiously obtaining an organ, which is essential since ECMO is a temporary device. All in all, this was a great outcome and a perfect birthday present for Rachel.”
With progress, Lanham hopes to return to work and spend more time caring for her children.
“The support of my family, friends, and faith have been critical for me; they got me through this whole thing,” Lanham said. “I take it one day at a time and try to do something new every day. I feel very blessed.”