Photo By: Cerenna Eakright Cerenna Eakright smiles with her dad, heart transplant recipient John Eakright.
By: Mira Costello
Editor-in-Chief
Donate Life America describes National Donor Day as an opportunity to celebrate different types of donation, ranging from bone marrow to blood and organ donation, and to appreciate donors, transplant recipients, those awaiting transplants, and those who did not receive a transplant in time.
For Cerenna Eakright, that means her family has a lot to celebrate today. A former IU South Bend student returning to campus in the fall, Cerenna is intimately familiar with organ donation: her father, John Eakright, received a heart transplant.
Before his procedure, Cerenna said John suffered from multiple genetic heart conditions.
“He had about seven heart attacks prior to going into heart failure,” she said. “He went into heart failure at the end of August 2022, and that’s when we figured out he was going to end up needing a transplant.”
Cerenna said it was a scary time for her family.
“It was kind of just shocking news, because we never guessed that he’d go into heart failure or need a transplant. Once we figured that out, everything moved really fast,” she said.
John was put on a medication called Milrinone, which treats heart failure by dilating blood vessels and strengthening the heart muscles, and sent home.
Cerenna said John was on Milrinone for three months, during which time Cerenna’s mother and an at-home nurse cared for him. While John still participated in family life during that time, the medication eventually stopped working effectively, and he was admitted to the hospital.
For those unfamiliar with cardiac conditions and transplants, three months may seem like a long time to live at home while in heart failure without any surgeries – and it is. However, the Health Resources and Services Administration has a transplant allocation system that assigns “medical urgency” statuses to each patient, where Status 1 is very urgent, and Status 6 is the least urgent, based on factors like other current treatments, implanted devices, ability to leave the hospital and even the need for other organ transplants.
“To be admitted into the hospital, you have to be at a low enough number on the list. One is near death – you’d be on a machine that’s keeping you alive,” Cerenna said. Her father was at Status 4 when he was admitted.
As his transplant grew imminent, amid countless other concerns about John’s wellbeing, Cerenna said her family had to deal with…health insurance.
“My mom had to fight with the insurance company to stay at Fort Wayne Lutheran Hospital,” Cerenna said, explaining that they lived just outside the radius that the insurance company preferred for that hospital. “I was more comfortable with the doctors; they had always treated my dad. It delayed a couple of days of doing tests for him.”
Ultimately, John was able to stay at Fort Wayne Lutheran, and he underwent a successful transplant on Dec. 14, 2022, just a day before his birthday. (Best gift ever!) The Eakrights weren’t in the clear yet, though.
“It was a little bit scary in the beginning, because we had to be really careful with his immune system, and we have kids in the house bringing all kinds of germs in, so that was a little bit stressful,” Cerenna said. “But he didn’t get any virus or sickness. He hasn’t had any rejection [of the heart].”
Almost a year and a half post-transplant, Cerenna said her dad is doing well.
“He’s actually back to work now and going to the gym, even. In his words, he feels the best he has ever felt in the past fifteen years of his life,” she said. “He feels like a new man.”
Of course, Cerenna is an organ donor.
“To me, it means so much,” she said. “I never truly understood how much being a donor meant until my dad needed an organ donor to survive. I can’t put it into words.”
There are many misconceptions about organ donation – for example, Cerenna said, that you have to be very fit, healthy or a certain size.
“It’s not necessarily true. It certainly does help, but there’s no limit to your size or your weight to be a donor,” she said. “It could actually be very beneficial – for people that are different sizes, it’s harder for them to find a donor.”
She added that recipients need more than just internal organs.
“There’s so many things you can donate that people don’t even think about that people may need, like skin,” Cerenna said. She’s right – Donate Life America lists a variety of organs and tissues for donation, not limited to lungs, pancreases, intestines, eyes, skin, bones, nerves, arteries and even placentae.
Most of the donations listed above come from deceased donation, which is the kind made possible by people who join organ donor registries and “donate their bodies” in the event of their death; John Eakright received his heart from a deceased donor. However, other transplants or transfusions may come from living donors who give blood, a kidney or part of their liver.
When asked what she would say to someone who was on the fence about becoming an organ donor, Cerenna summed it up:
“Why not?”
3 ways to join the Indiana organ donor registry:
Visit donatelifeindiana.org
Sign up at the DMV
Use Apple’s Health app on your iPhone