A South Carolina teenager said she felt like a "fake person" living for 118 days without a heart beating in her chest in-between heart transplants.
D'Zhana Simmons, 14, was released Wednesday from a Miami hospital after being kept alive on a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device.
"You never knew when it would malfunction," Simmons said, her voice barely above a whisper, at a news conference at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center.
"It was like I was a fake person, like I didn't really exist. I was just here," she said, referring to the time without a heart.
D'Zhana had dilated cardiomyopathy, which caused her original heart to become enlarged and too weak to pump blood sufficiently.
When her first transplanted heart also did not work properly in July, surgeons replaced it with two heart pumps until she recovered her strength.
South Carolina teen survives 4 months without heart
Originally Posted by DivineRevival
