Jamie's Story

My name is Jamie Johnson. I am a heart attack survivor, pacemaker defibrillator (ICD) warrior, and now a heart transplant survivor. I had a severe heart attack in 2004. It was what they call the Widowmaker. It killed the bottom left part of my heart. So, in 2005 I had to get an ICD because my heart was not beating correctly. In 2014, my ICD started shocking me nonstop so, I was in the emergency room often.  My ICD shocked me probably over 2000 times in a year. I had an appointment with the doctor in Austin, Texas who was going to fix the shocking, but I ended up in the emergency room. The ER doctor was calling everywhere to get me sent out to a heart hospital because my heart was getting shocked every few minutes. He told my son, Brian, and my sister, Kim, that I was not going to make it out of the emergency room if I didn’t get transferred to a heart hospital. So, they finally got a hold of a doctor in Austin that does an ablation.  They flew me over to that heart hospital. Ablation is burning of a spot in the heart that is shocking me. The bad thing about ablations is every spot they burn kills that part of your heart.  This was a temporary fix. My next steps were either a heart transplant or LVAD. I had met a lady that had an LVAD, and it scared me to death. After the ablation, the doctor put me on an IV medicine called Milrinone.  It was a miracle drug.  I felt so good on it.  

I stayed with my sister in Oklahoma and then went home to Artesia and stayed a couple of months with my son Brian.  The Austin hospital had not done a lot of heart transplants, and I would have to stay there nearly a year to be able to get a transplant from there. It just didn’t sound like it would work out for me. I was too far from Austin and the LVAD scared me so, they suggested I check into either Oklahoma City or Baylor in Dallas.  My sister and son investigated Baylor made an appointment for me there. Baylor had done over 100 in one year, so we felt good about that hospital. We met with several doctors and one of them said he would have me a heart in a month. He called early in the morning of October 19 and said he had a heart.  However, he wanted to tell me that it was high risk because the donor was on dialysis for several months. I asked him if he would you put this heart in his own mother, and he said he absolutely would.  So, I said OK, let’s do it.  We left from Oklahoma and drove to Dallas called everybody to tell them I was getting a new heart. I got my heart on October 21, 2015. It was a from 39 year-old mom of three that died of a severe asthma attack in a parking lot. I speak with her sister on Facebook. We keep in touch. They are a lovely family. 

It is 10 years this next month, that I’ve had this heart.  I just want to say that I couldn’t not have done this without my, Sherry, and my son, Brian. They that took care of me until I could come home and live another life. Thank you. I love you both. My daughter, Jessica, was pregnant with my first grandbaby Lily. Then the day my son brought me home, they surprised me by telling me that Aimee, my daughter in-law, was pregnant.  I now have 5 grandkids: 3 girls and two boys. They are what keep me alive. 

A fun blessing from this journey is that I am the one that brought Brian and Aimee together.  She was a student nurse at Lubbock hospital and on one of my hospital stays, I introduced them. 

This has been a journey I never thought I would have gone on, but here I am. It has been a blessing I tell my story to help save lives. My story grows every day I am here.