Have a Heart

Casual

“Everyone should be an organ donor because they are no use to you once you are gone but there are many lives that depend on organ donors. My life depends on it.”.

These are the words of 30 year old Katrina Rehlaender, a young woman who received her donor heart on Valentine’s Day at age 11. “I remember the day so vividly,” she tells me. “I was eating a salad sandwich with my older brother and his friend when the phone call came through. Mum and dad were told a car would pick us up in 30 minutes to take us to the airport and I would be flown to Melbourne and be prepped for surgery as soon as I landed.”

Katrina was used to hospitals and major operations by this time. Born with a hole in her heart, she endured her first open heart surgery to fit a pacemaker and artificial valve when she was just five. Over the next six years, more operations and more long stints in hospital followed.

When Katrina was 11, she contracted Golden Staph infection from one of the surgeries and it damaged her heart so badly that she was told she would be dead within weeks if she did not get a heart transplant. “It was a difficult time for my whole family,” she recalls. “Mum and dad always treated me like an adult when it came to explaining what was happening to me. They tried to be gentle but they did not hide the seriousness of the situation to me. I hoped I would not die but I was old enough to understand that I was running out of time to get better.”

Following that Valentine’s Day phone call, Katrina’s heart transplant surgery was a great success. There were two weeks in the Intensive Care Unit and another three months of careful monitoring to ensure the anti-rejection drugs were working and that Katrina’s condition was improving. “As soon as I got out of ICU I felt better than I had felt in my whole life,” she says. “My breathing was better, my energy levels were better, I started to feel like I might be able to finally have a normal life like other kids my age.”

Over the last 20 years, Katrina has been able to lead a relatively active and “normal life”. Perhaps because she spent so much of her childhood in hospital, she was drawn to career in pathology and worked as a lab assistant for six years until she threw it all in five years ago for a new adventure in the Northern Territory. “My brother moved to Darwin and kept telling me what a great place it was, so I came to visit for six months, but have been here ever since,” she says.

Katrina took a job as a site administrator for Swick Mining based at the Granites Gold Mine. “It is a really exciting job with a great bunch of people and the management at Swick are extremely supportive of my health matters. I couldn’t ask for a better place to work and live,” she adds.

While life could not be better for Katrina, she is preparing herself for the future, which includes having to find another heart donor in a few years. “Like all organ donor’s, I have a bitter sweet relationship with my anti-rejection drugs because while they keep my body from rejecting my donor heart, they are hard on the organs too,” she said. “I know that I will need to go on the transplant waiting list again for a new heart. I really hope I get the phone call that will save my life again because I have not finished living yet.”