All I want for Christmas is a new heart
Mum’s desperate plea for ailing baby daughter
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 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’s life.
Leeander, 30, from Glasgow, is backing our sister newspaper the Daily Mirror’s Change the Law for Life campaign – which wants people to have to opt out of donating organs – after meeting the family of heart transplant boy Max Johnson.
Like Max, Zariah has cardiomyopathy, which enlarges the heart.
Leeander said: “She has been waiting a long time. I am exhausted. It is just existing, waiting.
“Her [heart] is now like a rugby ball when you see it on the X-ray.”
“We took Zahira 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.
Zariah was diagnosed this year after Leeander mentioned during a routine hospital appointment that she was breathing very quickly.
A scan showed her heart was significantly enlarged, and she was moved from Glasgow Queen Elizabeth Hospital to Freeman Hospital in Newcastle in June.
Leeander said: “I was in despair. Zariah had been battling this condition since she was born and I had no idea.”
Surgeon Fabrizio De Rita fitted Zariah with a mechanical Berlin Heart in July to keep her alive after she suffered a stroke and a bleed on the brain.
She celebrated her first birthday surrounded by family in hospital on September 29. De Rita believes the opt-out system will provide more vital donors. He said: “The younger and smaller the patient, the longer the time on the waiting list.”
Zariah’s immune system is very immature so she may be able to take a mixed-match heart.
Leeander said: “There is a bigger chance of rejection but it is hard for ethnic minorities to get donor organs. As long as the blood group is the same, they can use drugs to tackle rejection and she’d accept the heart.”
The Sick Children’s Trust have given Leeander accommodation in Newcastle and she’s backing their appeal for funds. ● To help, go to sickchildrenstrust.org and organdonation.nhs.uk.