For a week or two shy of the 18 month mark post transplant everything went pretty well. There was a period of time of dealing with medication side effects, and learning to be the new Ceara she had to become. At the one yeark mark especially, all that had seemed to level out. Ceara was working hard to catch up in school, in hopes of graduating with her class. ZERO rejection all along the way. The last couple of months she was feeling better than ever, working out daily- even swimming during the chilly winter months at the lake! She had learned of the Transplant Games- a tradition similar to the Olympics for people of all ages who had been through some type of organ transplant. Graduation was just a few weeks away and it was beginning to look like she was going to achieve that goal. Senior pictures were taken. A senior prom dress picked out and purchased. She had the honor of being asked to speak at the Mission Hospital Donate Life Flag raising on April 3rd and spoke amazingly well and was featured on our local news. She had changed her plan to a career goal to become an EMT and hopefully begin working for LifeShare, in transporting procured organs to be donated. 

Two days later she started feeling a little down. A small pain in her left side that she thought might possibly be pneumonia. Her team was contacted. After a week and a half, things went back and forth and got a little trickier. She was hospitalized at Levine Children’s for what we thought would be a straightforward chest tube insertion and time to recover. The next day it was discovered that what was believed to be pneumonia was heart failure from rejection. A level 2 bordering on 3. (with 3 being the worst.) ACUTE CELLULAR REJECTION, that like with most things Ceara, did not present normally. Tomorrow makes two weeks inpatient with most of that time being in ICU, intubated and on ECMO (a type of heart/lung machine). It’s been a HARD couple of weeks. In just a couple of hours she will undergo a surgery, going through her chest and to reroute the ECMO cannulas through her chest rather than her legs. The hope is to get her off of the ventilator and up and moving. This will allow her to rehabilitate, get stronger, and either give time for her current heart to recover or to be retransplanted. Many unknowns with what looks to be months of recovery. 

We are disappointed, sad, and scared, but we believe that God is able to heal her, even if that may not come in the way that we would choose. We are thankful for a huge care team here in Charlotte that is beyond incredible and feel blessed to have a huge community of support of our family and friends.