Jaelyn Kinchelow was 14 years old, running at her school track practice when she suddenly felt a tightness in her chest. She couldn't run anymore, and she kept slowing down. Eventually, her legs gave up, and she fell down. She was quickly taken to a nearby hospital, where she was diagnosed with a heart att-ck. She even underwent an open-heart operation where the doctors repaired her artery wall using a vein from her leg. After the operation, her heart could only function at 5%. She was put on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine (ECMO machine), which removes carbon dioxide from the gore and sends back oxygen.
Jaelyn also said that the doctors tried their best to keep her alive. She spent about a month in the hospital and even went into c-ma for eight days before she was finally able to go home. Once she went to high school, Jaelyn started taking part in roller skating and choir and finally got admitted to a nursing college. She always wanted to become a nurse and help others.
During the last semester of her nursing school, her health started to deter-iorate again. She would find it diffi-cult to climb the stairs and was struggling to perform day-to-day activities. That's when she visited a hospital and realised she had to put her name on the transplant list. She spent the next three months at the Riley Hospital in Indianapolis waiting for the right donor and was disturbed because her blo-od group was rare. Finally, Jaelyn got a call from Debbie, the transplant coordinator at Riley's hospital, who informed her that they found a donor. The very next day, she underwent heart transplant.
Just when she recovered from the transplant, she received a letter from the donor's family, and she was emotional and thanked them. Jaelyn is now on a mission to raise awareness about heart sickness amongst women and the importance of organ donation. Studies say that heart dis-ease is the primary cause of life loss amongst Black women in the US, and most often, they are not even aware that heart sickness is the cause of their life loss.
Jaelyn also encouraged people to donate their organs and to do their fair share of research on the chance of heart att-ck. Now she's all set to pick up from where she left and finish her nursing degree to help save lives, and also requested people to take care of their health.
