Shaunté Brewer, a coronary heart transplant recipient, tends to her chickens in her yard on March 6, 2024, in Chicago.
E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/TNS
CHICAGO — Shaunté Brewer didn’t know that her well being was at risk at age 13. Because the Chicago resident recollects, she was extra centered on passing her softball take a look at in health club than on her prevalent cough. Happily, Brewer’s mom decided that the sound and persistence of her daughter’s cough known as for a visit to the hospital.
“The best way she described the cough was a mixture of a smoker’s cough. Think about a 13-year-old lady with an excellent deep cough,” stated Brewer, now 36. “I simply knew my mom was waking me up for nothing in any respect. I by no means made that softball take a look at. As quickly as we went into the emergency room, I knew triage was going to take a look at all the pieces and say you possibly can go dwelling with a chilly.”
However when she was proven her X-ray, her coronary heart was on either side of her chest. Brewer stated her coronary heart was swollen to the purpose the place it was struggling to beat.
“Thank God for my mom,” Brewer stated.
She remembers how her mouth-breathing whereas working led physicians to the basis of the issue. She had myocarditis, irritation of the guts muscle. Dr. William Cotts — Brewer’s heart specialist and medical director of superior coronary heart failure and coronary heart transplantation at Advocate Christ Medical Middle in Oak Garden — stated Brewer’s situation was attributable to a virus. Her physique seemingly attacked her coronary heart when it was attacking the virus.
“Oftentimes it’s self-limited, it will get higher, folks’s hearts get again to regular, they’re superb,” he stated. “And in some sufferers, their hearts worsen over time.”
Brewer was placed on remedy and maintained her well being, dwelling her life to the very best of her capacity — touring, turning into an educator and signing as much as be an organ donor at age 19, not realizing that she was going to be on the opposite aspect of the method someday.
When getting back from a visit to South Africa with layover in Amsterdam, Brewer contracted COVID-19. And whereas she and her coronary heart made it by means of that, Brewer stated she felt totally different afterward. She didn’t have the power to do something from that time on. She misplaced a bunch of weight and couldn’t preserve meals down. Once more, she went to the hospital, considering it was a abdomen bug.
“Lo and behold I discovered that was my coronary heart saying, ‘I fought the great battle, and it’s time to retire,’” Brewer stated. She went into Christ Medical Middle and fewer than every week later, on Feb. 12, 2023, she had a brand new coronary heart. She remained within the hospital for six weeks.
Brewer celebrated the primary anniversary of her coronary heart transplant throughout February, which is American Coronary heart Month, with a visit to Wisconsin Dells and celebrations with family and friends. She was used to dwelling with decreased coronary heart perform for almost all of her life, and had come to phrases with the truth that she might not make it to her 80s or 90s, like her members of the family.
“Now that I’ve the transplant, I really feel like I’m going to be right here till I’m 90. I will be right here with the remainder of my household,” she stated. Brewer is all about sharing her expertise as a transplant recipient with the world, together with her elementary college students.
As founder and govt director of Imaginative and prescient Outreach, an initiative that brings her into school rooms to show STEAM (science, know-how, engineering, artwork and math), city agriculture and social-emotional studying, she’s been discussing the science behind her well being situation since she based the group in 2012. She presently teaches elementary faculty youngsters at Cambridge Classical Academy within the Grand Boulevard neighborhood.
Brewer stated she’s taken in calf hearts and lungs from butchers so college students can carry out faux surgical procedures. When college students ask about her surgical procedure scar or see the 36-year-old utilizing a cane, Brewer turns the questions into teachable moments on science, biology and wholesome life. She goals to impart information in addition to knowledge, which can in flip department out and alter the outlook of Black communities to make folks more healthy and happier.
“I speak to them about their weight loss plan and diet,” she stated. “I already was a really tech-savvy individual. Now I’ve included science because it pertains to well being in addition to house. The scholars which have seen me prior to now two years noticed me coming into the varsity with a PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line. In order that they actually noticed the development of my well being and I informed them to recollect: Did you guys ever hear me converse something however positivity about my explicit state of affairs? I all the time preserve a constructive mindset.”