I Had a Heart Transplant and a Stroke—Then Set Myself a Huge Challenge

I woke up in the ICU at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee ten days after my heart transplant. Despite a successful surgery, complications kept me on the ventilator until that morning on October 16, 2018.

Acute kidney injury, dialysis, stroke, respiratory failure, atrial flutter, and ICU delirium kept me bedridden.

Moving my body from bed to chair required three people. My legs would not respond to my commands. Prolonged bedrest atrophied the muscles in my legs, and a stroke garbled the communication between brain and body.

Before the transplant, I possessed a heart that could barely power my body to travel the distance from the bed to the bathroom. Now, I inherited a heart capable of running a marathon, but my body struggled to move me at all.

After another week in a hospital bed, I was released to a rehabilitation center. Two weeks of intensive physical therapy allowed me to gain the ability to walk 50 steps using only a four-pronged cane for support.

This was enough improvement for me to be discharged to a nearby apartment where I lived temporarily with my husband and little dog, Gidget McFidget.

My first night home began with a bang, or, more accurately, a siren. The fire alarm for the apartment complex sounded minutes after I fell asleep in my own bed.

With the elevator disabled for fire safety, I cautiously picked my way down the stairs as the alarm blared, working hand over hand with a white-knuckled grip on the railing, both feet together on each step as I crept toward the bottom.

Jay stayed one step ahead of me, bracing to catch me if I should slip.

As my strength returned, Jay and I, along with Gidget, ventured out on walks down the Nashville streets near our little apartment.

Cardiac rehab occupied one hour a day for three days per week, but the bulk of my recovery came from placing one foot in front of the other—walking the streets and climbing steps at every opportunity.

Despite living together for fourteen years, Jay and I never married during that time. When the urgent call came with a heart available for transplant, Jay rushed to my side and, in the emotion of the moment, asked me to marry him.

I said yes, and the one-year period of living near the hospital in a tiny apartment doubled as our newlywed phase.

We frequently visited my father who lived in the Smokey Mountains. During our first few trips, I confined myself to exploring the flat areas of his acreage wedged between the banks of the Obey River and the face of a mountain, until Jay dragged me along an expedition up the side of the mountain which marked the property boundary.

At first, I hesitated, unsure if I possessed the strength to make the climb, but my legs moved independent of my thought, finding footholds and heaving me up from one rock to the next with unerring precision.

Both my heart and my body were strong, carrying me effortlessly across the terrain to a view of the land from halfway up the cliff. The entire valley and the river flowing through it lay beneath the mist rising from the tops of the Smokey Mountains as we enjoyed our own private nest in the clouds.

The climbing bug bit me hard. Over the next several visits with my father, we found multiple trails and overlooks to explore. We journeyed to the Bee Rock Overlook in Monterey, Tennessee for the view of autumn leaves blazing through thousands of trees cascading beneath us.

We soaked in the mist of Fall Creek Falls State Park in Spencer, Tennessee, capturing images of the rainbows glowing within the cataracts spilling down the mountainside.

At every turn, my legs churned through the trails, powered by the relentless chugging of my heart.

My father, a retired U.S. Marine, vacationed every February at a military resort in Oahu, Hawaii. The resort allowed him to sponsor a guest, and Jay and I began planning our long-delayed honeymoon.

Pouring over websites listing things to do in Honolulu, I learned that Diamond Head sat only a few miles away from the hotel. The seed of an idea sprouted inside me.

"I want to climb Diamond Head," I announced.

"Do you think you can do it? I mean, it's a big mountain." A look of concern crossed his face. His view of me remained clouded by the memory of my lifeless body suckled by a ventilator tube.

"I think so." Hesitance crept into my voice. "The website lists the trail as moderate difficulty."

Before I could chicken out, I went online and booked our reservation for early morning on Valentine's Day, 2023, choosing to celebrate our love and our life together with the miraculous ascent of a dormant volcano.

This brought us to climbing a mountain at sunrise. The website forecasted the climb to take between one and two hours, and I expected to be on the longer end of the spectrum.

My heart might have been young and strong, but my legs, and particularly my knees, felt every bit of 55 years old.

The overnight rain slicked the volcanic rock to a surface like wet clay. My feet slid as much as they found purchase.

Most of the steep trails were lined with sturdy metal railings and chain link fencing attached at strategic spots, presumably to catch a falling hiker before they tumbled off the side of the mountain.

The fencing made me imagine a hockey net, and I pictured myself as the puck with no goalie in sight.

Halfway to the top, we paused to rest at a group of benches hewn out of the rock. The morning chill receded as the sun edged over the lip of the crater, exposing the side of the mountain to full sunlight, and beads of sweat appeared on my forehead.

I peeled off my damp T-shirt and stuffed it in my tote bag, continuing the climb in a tank top.

"There's no shame in turning back if we don't make it to the top? Right?" I began to second-guess my burning desire to reach the summit.

"We came here to climb to the top," Jay encouraged me. "You can do it."

Keeping my eyes on the trail to spot potholes and ankle-breaking crevices, I resumed the climb. In my fancy black running shoes with hot pink laces, my feet gingerly picked out a path.

It seemed astonishing that these were the same feet previously clad in blue hospital socks with grippy soles, barely able to carry me ten steps with three people helping to support my weight.

Each sock-covered foot had felt like it weighed a hundred pounds as I struggled to lift it inches above the floor in my hospital room only to drop it back down like a leaden weight.

Back then, the weakness of my legs kept me perpetually off balance. Now, the strength of my legs propelled me ever higher.

An hour after we began our climb, we were three-quarters of the way to the top. Few climbers shared the trail as we began our journey, but as the sun rose higher in the sky, a steady stream of tourists joined us.

My slow speed led to a series of younger, faster visitors passing us on the trail. Occasionally, someone returning from the summit would squeeze past us on their way back down the mountain, but now people were pushing their way through on the way up.

Every time, I shrunk against the rail and avoided looking down, all the while wondering if whatever anchored the rail to the rock would break loose and send me plummeting down into the crater below.

We reached a dark, narrow tunnel drilled directly through the mountainside. Walking single file, we entered the cool shade of the horizontal shaft. I surprised myself by letting out a sigh of relief. At least I couldn't fall off the tunnel.

As my eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight after emerging from the tunnel, I saw what I thought at first was an optical illusion. A flight of stairs so steep they looked like a ladder shot straight up the mountainside.

"Oh, Hell no!" I exclaimed. "I'm not doing that."

Jay pulled out the map and stopped me before I could sound the retreat.

"There's another route. We can loop around and look at a military bunker and then head up to the top. You don't have to climb these stairs."

We continued along the alternate route to the old bunker overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Diamond Head had served as a strategic military installment for the United States during World War II, guarding Pearl Harbor and the rest of the island.

Our stay at the resort for military personnel was made possible due to the large U.S. presence on the island during the war.

Jay crawled inside the ancient bunker to look around and take pictures, while I enjoyed the ocean view. The sun was halfway to its zenith, and the light bounced off the water like a mirror shattering itself against the rocks below.

"You ready?"

Jay emerged from the dugout and the sunlight cast his features in bronze. No longer a young man, he appeared revitalized in the light, illuminated from without and within.

The sun had progressed halfway through the morning sky, and we were both more than halfway through our lives, but for a moment, time stood still, and we were youthful and ancient and ageless all at once.

For a single heartbeat, ten heartbeats, our love shone eternal.

We continued onto the final leg to the summit. At the penultimate point, hikers crowded around a ladder to ascend to the overlook.

I slowly traced the perimeter of the platform, snapping dozens of pictures. From this vantage point, Waikiki looked like a postcard on the horizon.

The ocean rolled to the edge of the earth until it merged with the sky in an indistinguishable field of blue, its surface broken with tiny dark specks of boats and the occasional long black lines of freighters bearing cargo into the port of Honolulu.

The dull roar of the waves faded into the wind whipping across the peak of the mountain. The salty tang of the ocean air whetted my lips as it carried up from the spray. Gulls circled in the distance, their cries punctuating the wind and the waves.

Jay's voice broke my reverie. "It's our turn to climb to the top."

I scampered up the metal ladder, stepping out onto the platform cantilevered over the edge of the mountain. I smiled broadly, forgetting to be self-conscious of my overbite while Jay snapped several pictures of our successful ascent.

Our return trip down the mountain felt much easier than the climb, perhaps because we had gravity on our side, or because joy buoyed my steps.

We came once again to the benches hewn out of volcanic rock. A much larger crowd of people lingered in the area than we encountered on our ascent, and we huddled close together on a bench next to a gentleman who sat alone, staring into the distance with a look of grief.

"Do you mind if we join you?" I asked. "Or are you saving this spot?"

"No, it's fine. I'm climbing alone."

We learned that the man should have been on vacation in Hawaii with his wife, but she could not join him because she was hospitalized in Texas undergoing cancer treatment.

Their reservations were non-refundable, and she urged him to go without her. We discussed medical conditions and treatments, and I in turn told him about my heart transplant. He seemed encouraged by the story of my recovery.

"Maybe that will be her next year, if she beats this," he said, then he picked up his backpack and continued his climb.

This conversation reinforced how truly fortunate I had been throughout my journey. Not only had a donor heart been found in time to save my life, but I made a remarkable recovery, regaining my strength and functional capacity.

When we descended to the park, Jay and I sat at a picnic table and drank the last of our water, then I abruptly stood up.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

I turned and smiled at Jay.

"I'm heading over to the gift shop. We just climbed a mountain, baby! I'm getting the T-shirt!"

Dawn Levitt is a two-time heart transplant recipient. She is a freelance writer, poet, and essayist who is currently writing a memoir about growing up with congenital heart disease and receiving two heart transplants. She lives with her family near a wetland preserve in the Detroit suburbs. You can find her on X, or sign up for her free newsletter at "From My Heart to Yours" on Substack.

All views expressed are the author's own.

Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? See our Reader Submissions Guide and then email the My Turn team at [email protected].