Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
All I want for Christmas is a new heart
Mum’s plea to save daughter’s life
A DESPERATE mum wants just one thing for Christmas – a donor heart to save her baby’s life.
Leeander Barrett’s 14-month-old daughter Zariah has end-stage heart failure. She has been waiting for a donor seven months, and has already missed out on one organ. The heart she was offered several weeks ago was too small, so it was used to save another baby.
Leeander, 30, is supporting the Mirror’s successful Change the Law for Life campaign after meeting the family of Mirror transplant boy Max Johnson, nine. Like Max, Zariah has cardiomyopathy, which enlarges the heart.
Leeander, from Glasgow, said: “Her [heart] is now like a rugby ball when you see it on the X-ray. She has been waiting a long, long time. I am exhausted. It is just existing, waiting.
“We took Zariah to post her letter to Santa. I have written a letter too, and my wish was for a new heart.”
Leeander studied social care in Scotland, where she met Zariah’s dad Mauro Alvano, 27. She said Zariah was diag- nosed at six months old, after Leeander mentioned at a hospital appointment that she was breathing quickly.
A scan showed her heart was enlarged, and she was moved from Glasgow Queen Elizabeth Hospital to Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, in June.
Leeander said: “I was in despair. Zariah had been battling this condition since she was born, and I had no idea.”
In July surgeon Fabrizio De Rita fitted Zariah with a mechanical Berlin heart to keep her alive after she suffered a stroke and a bleed on the brain.
She spent her first birthday on September 29 in hospital. Mr De Rita believes the opt-out system, which Theresa May has signalled will be adopted, will provide more vital donors. He said: “The younger the patient, the longer the time on the waiting list.”
The Sick Children’s Trust has provided Leeander with accommodation in Newcastle, and she is backing its Christmas appeal for funds.
Charlie Douthwaite, nine weeks, may be rejecting the heart he received after a Europe-wide appeal for a donor, dad Stephen, of Newcastle, said yesterday.