Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Heart from anonymous donor gives teen new lease on life
HOLLYWOOD – Timothy Jones has two birthdays now.
The day he was born, Nov. 21, 2002.
And Dec. 1, 2018, the day an anonymous heart donor and surgeons at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital bequeathed the 16-year-old with “a second chance in life.”
On that Saturday, the Blanche Ely 10th-grader became the Hollywood hospital’s 50th pediatric recipient of a heart transplant since the program debuted in 2010.
“It’s amazing because it’s basically like a second chance in life,” Timothy said Tuesday in a reunion at the hospital with his surgical team. “I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
A French horn player in his Pompano Beach high school’s marching band, Timothy fell deathly ill, fatigued with flu-like symptoms, aches, pains and diarrhea. He lost his appetite and couldn’t sleep while lying down.
Doctors diagnosed Timothy with dilated cardiomyopathy and told him he needed a new heart because his wasn’t pumping blood effectively.
Shock was Timothy’s overarching reaction. “Wow, someone like me who has never been in a hospital has to get a new heart?”
Timothy went on a waiting list Nov. 2, turned 16 on Nov. 21 and got a new heart Dec. 1.
Last week, he went home for the first time since all that happened.
“It was a perfect heart for Timothy,” said Frank Scholl, surgeon and chief of the hospital’s Heart Institute.
Fifty heart transplants is a milestone the hospital is proud of, Scholl said. “It means there are 50 kids out there in South Florida who got a chance to live longer and enjoy the rest of their lives.”
And that, Timothy said, is exactly what he’s aiming to do.
He is looking forward to going back to school, resuming physical activity and mostly, Timothy said, he wants to “just live life.”