A teenager is back at home with a new heart just two months after doctors gave her a five per cent chance of survival.
Emily Linaker, 14, had been on the waiting list for a heart transplant for several months, but the operation became urgent after her heart deteriorated so suddenly it left her on the brink of death.
Her mother, Sam, said they now feel like ‘the luckiest family on the planet’ after a donor heart became available just in time to save her.
Emily, from Blackburn, in Lancashire, was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy – a condition which reduces the heart’s ability to fill up, reducing the blood flow – at the beginning of 2013 after her legs swelled up.
Doctors became concerned in November when she began vomiting heavily. She was taken to the specialist Freeman Hospital in Newcastle.
Emily’s blood pressure and heart rate dropped dangerously low and she was admitted to intensive care and put on an ECMO machine - a device that does the work of the heart and lungs.
As a complication of the machine being fitted, she suffered severe internal bleeding and doctors feared she would not recover.
Mrs Linaker, 47, said: ‘She was very, very poorly for about three days and it was touch and go whether she’d make it.
‘She was bleeding so heavily that when they opened her chest there were three litres of blood washing around in her lungs.
‘They only gave her a five per cent chance of survival and talked to us about preparing for the worst.
‘It was such a hard thing to hear and I can’t even begin to describe how it felt. I was so scared, it was unreal.
‘But gradually the bleeding stopped and they managed to stabilise her and clean up the blood.’
Emily was moved up the transplant waiting list as her condition deteriorated and she was incredibly lucky to learn a heart had become available just after she recovered from the internal bleeding.
Mrs Linaker, who is married to drainage engineer Kevin, said: ‘It was perfect timing because, had it turned up a couple of days earlier, she would have been too poorly to accept it.
‘There were eight children on the priority list but it was an adult heart and she was the biggest. We feel like the luckiest people on the planet that it came up at that time.’
The transplant went ahead on November 13 and there were no complications, but Emily had to stay in hospital for another five weeks, returning home just in time for Christmas.
She has since suffered some seizures and nerve damage to her leg from her time in intensive care means she will be on crutches for a few weeks, but these are not major concerns and there have been no problems with the heart.
Her family has been told the donor was a lady in her 30s who died of a brain tumour.
For the next three months Emily will have to take 40 tablets each day, and will need weekly check-ups in Newcastle, but she hopes to return to school in April.
She said: ‘I feel tonnes better already and I’m glad to be at home. I can finally go upstairs without having to stop. I didn’t really experience a lot of what happened in hospital and when I woke up it felt like I’d been asleep for ages and ages.’
Her mother, who works as a nurse educator, added: ‘The staff at Newcastle were absolutely wonderful. I genuinely couldn’t fault any of them and we can’t thank them enough.
What they did was incredible, and we are also so grateful to the donor for being so thoughtful and generous to sign up to the register and give Emily a chance of life.
‘When we left there were still people with young children who had been there when we arrived and were still waiting for an organ. It was really heart-breaking to hear their stories, so we need as many people as possible to sign up to the donation register.’
Julie Flett, children’s transplant liaison sister at the Freeman Hospital, said: ‘We are delighted that Emily is doing so well following her heart transplant.
‘She has been incredibly brave and is a great credit to her family. Our thoughts are also with the donor family especially at this time of year.’
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