“I got a new heart that saved my life on Valentine’s Day”

Included in cards and even stuffed animals, the heart is the symbol of Valentine’s Day.

It represents love and happiness for many, but for Michelle Crawford it is also an annual reminder that she was given a second chance at life.

On February 14, 1992, when he was only 10 years old, he underwent a heart transplant that saved his life.

His family had been told that he only had a few weeks to live, unless a donor was found.

“The consensus at the time was ‘we have to give this girl a chance, we have to help her,'” Michelle told the BBC on the 30th anniversary of the operation.

“They described the width of my artery as if it couldn’t even be pierced with a match,” he added.

“There wasn’t really any blood passing through and the heart was severely failing, so at any moment it could just give up,” he recalled.

Michelle was born with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, a condition that caused her organs to fail, with enlarged cells in the heart obstructing blood flow.

Given her age, to protect her, they did not tell her everything about her situation. “Deep down she knew there was a sense of peace, almost a sense of acceptance that she might not make it,” she said.

“The only solution, really, is a new heart”, doctors told her family at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in November 1991, according to Michelle’s account. She was from Derry, a city in the northwest of the British country.

“We didn’t even know what the term ‘transplant’ meant. In medical terms, I was not fit to go through that operation.”

“That was the sign”

In February 1992, the night before the call that a donor had been found, Michelle said she had a dream about a transplant in which she was lying in a hospital bed with another girl.

“They took his heart out and then they put it in me,” he said.

“When I woke up and told my mom, I remember her reaction was absolutely stunned.”

“I remember that both my parents and my grandparents used to say that that was the sign that he was going to have a heart and that he would be fine”, he added.

When the call came in the afternoon of February 13, there was a four-hour window to travel from Derry, via Belfast, to London’s Harefield Hospital.

They arrived that night and Michelle was in the operating room for more than seven hours, until the early hours of Valentine’s Day.

Upon waking up, the 10-year-old girl could only communicate by writing notes, as she was receiving oxygen through a mask.

The notes she shared with the BBC reveal just how terrifying and confusing the experience was for her.

“I’m scared,” said one, another: “I want my mommy and daddy here,” and: “Last night it hurt.”

“A lot of it was based on fear, that’s how I felt at the time, it was petrifying“, he claimed.

“I’m dead? I’m dying? What’s happening to me? I can’t breathe”, she thought then.

However, the difference after the operation was great. Michelle said that vividly remembers seeing his “new self” for the first time.

“I remember when they picked me up. I woke up, sat up from the bed and my mother said: ‘Would you like to look at yourself in the mirror?’

“Actually, I couldn’t recognize the little girl from before at all, she was completely changed instantly.”

“He had a fresh and bright face, I had rosy cheeks for the first time in my lifeShe had bright red lips.”

“I was just bursting with life and that was very apparent and I loved how I looked because it was like the new me: beautiful, absolutely beautiful”.

a second birthday

Michelle said Valentine’s Day has since become “a second birthday.”

“It’s something that never leaves you, it’s such a deep experience, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.”

“I think it’s amazing to me that it fell on such a special date and I feel very blessed with it.”

“It sounds so corny to say I got a new heart on Valentine’s Day, but if there’s going to be one day in the year, it’s the most perfect!”

At the beginning of February, the Northern Ireland Assembly approved a bill to make organ donation mandatory from 2023, unless the individual expressly wishes.

It will soon receive royal assent and will be commonly known as “Dáithí’s Bill” after Dáithí MacGabhann, a 5-year-old boy from Belfast who is awaiting a heart transplant.

Michelle urged her family to “never give up hope” and congratulated them on their campaign that led to the legislation.

“We have waited so long and it is going to give life and improve the lives of so many people who are waiting,” he said.

“I think he’s an amazing kid.”

“Everyone is up for it and can’t wait for that little boy to get the new heart he so deserves.”