A new heart for the holidays: Northampton mom, 42, is grateful for healthy 27-year-old heart

Northampton mom, 42, is grateful to be home with a healthy 27-year-old heart

December 21, 2013|By Milton D. Carrero, Of The Morning Call

A strong heartbeat. A deep breath.

Most people can take these for granted, but not Yanira Barona. She knows what it's like to live with a faint pulse and to be winded after taking just a few steps.

The 6-foot-tall Northampton woman, who used to race down the court as a varsity basketball player for Allentown Central Catholic High School, has suffered from an enlarged heart for more than 13 years.

Yanira, a single mother of two, developed ways to keep the home running on days when her face looked gray and her heart was working at less than 20 percent of its potential.

"When you have two kids and you're a single parent, sickness is not an option," she said. "You just have to push through it."

Her children learned to call 911 before they learned to multiply. They have seen their mother faint at their basketball games. Yanira has survived heart attacks, strokes, open heart surgeries and more invasive medical procedures at the age of 42 than she cares to remember.

Then, on Nov. 6, she got the call. The heart of a 27-year-old man was awaiting her at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. It was a perfect match.

Surgery went into the early morning hours. On Nov. 7, a powerful pounding woke Yanira. She thought something was wrong. Then she realized the pounding was coming from her new heart.

"It's amazing — I feel a heartbeat," she recalls thinking.

Yanira's heartbreak

Yanira had her son, Alex, at age 21. Celeste, "Cece," was born when Yanira was 24. The father of her children left the household when she was 27.

"I've been through so many emotional things in my lifetime," Yanira said, "that I seriously think that you do take things to heart and it can hurt your heart."

At 28, Yanira found herself struggling to breathe while working at work. She told her supervisor at the former Wachovia Bank and left to find help.

Her physician initially thought she had bronchitis. That was until she went into heart failure and doctors discovered the matter was more serious.

"My heart would just jump-start fast," Yanira said. "It would not become regular."

The irregularity of her heartbeat, her shortness of breath, the dizziness and palpitations pointed toward ischemic cardiomyopathy, or a weakened heart that can lead to failure.

"I didn't even understand what that meant," she said. "I don't think that I believed it when I was told."

In 2004, doctors installed a defibrillator to stabilize her erratic heartbeat. In 2007, Yanira took Cece to her middle school for a basketball game.

She collapsed on the floor before Cece could shoot her first hoop. Yanira screamed for help until a fellow mom came to her aid and remained by her side until an ambulance arrived. The defibrillator had fractured, and Yanira kept feeling its incessant shocks.

Yanira, who had worked as a bank teller and coached her church basketball team, was forced to sit on life's bench. She could not work. Her heart function diminished with each passing day.

In 2010, Yanira joined friends to watch a basketball game at Allentown's Cedar Beach. She was sitting in the bleachers drinking a soda. The can was the first to hit the floor when her left side went numb. She tried to walk but couldn't keep her balance.

A friend walked her to the car. Yanira reached for the door handle but couldn't grasp it. Her friend was crying. Yanira's face had contorted..

That was the first stroke. On the day she was to be released from the hospital, she suffered another. She spent most of 2011 in and out of the hospital. Late in the year, doctors placed her on the heart transplant waiting list. She was hoping the holidays would bring a new heart, but she ended up watching the New Year's ball descend on Times Square on a TV in her hospital room.

In February 2012, when her heart function had diminished to 5 percent and other organs were beginning to fail, Dr. Edward Stephenson begged Yanira to consider more aggressive measures.

The transplant team had recommended she undergo open-heart surgery to install an assistive device that would buy her some time until a heart became available. Yanira was hesitant.

"You have to let me save your life," the heart transplant surgeon implored, persuading her to accept the procedure.

She was likely to die without it, but she was afraid of the possibility of going to sleep and never waking up. Who would take her daughter to get her driver's license? Who would make sure her son would learn to cook?

'A bucket in my heart'

After that first open-heart surgery, Yanira would spend her early mornings tightly clenching a huge stuffed heart that kept her company during her nightmares.

"I have a lot of anger because I have so much disappointment," she said. "Everybody has disappointments. But I carry them in a bucket in my heart."

Yanira had second thoughts about letting go of her heavy heart. Hidden somewhere in the organ, she reasoned, lived her identity. Her heartbreaks and milestones defined her.

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