Jennifer Sutton (pictured), 38, could be reunited with her once-vital organ when her heart was removed in transplant surgery 16 years ago
As reunions go, it might not get much weirder than coming face to face with your own heart.
Jennifer Sutton, 38, was able to be reunited with her once-vital organ when her heart was removed 16 years ago during a transplant.
And today she was reunited with the vital organ on permanent display in a central London museum, an experience she described as “surreal.”
Jennifer, who was just 22 when she got a new heart, which literally gave her a second life at Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire.
Describing seeing her heart in a museum display case, she said, “It’s extremely surreal to see it. I definitely have a fondness for it, although it caused so many problems in me.
“I’m glad it’s in that jar and I have a new one.
“I’m thankful though because it’s kept me alive for 22 years, it’s like an old friend.
‘I think it’s cool. It reminds me of everything I’ve been through and I hope in time other people will look at it and consider organ donation.
“I am incredibly grateful to my donor, I cannot describe how grateful I am and will forever be, and my wonderful surgeon.”
Jennifer, from Ringwood, Hampshire, doesn’t know much about her donor, except that he was a 33-year-old man named Richard.
The heart can be seen by the public at the museum in the building of the Royal College of Surgeons in Holborn, central London, home to thousands of anatomical exhibits.
The museum has recently been at the center of some controversy after it turned down requests for the burial of the 7ft7in skeleton of an Irish giant, Charles Byrne, in the museum’s collection, although the skeleton is no longer on public display.
The heart (pictured) can be seen by the public at the museum in the building of the Royal College of Surgeons in Holborn, central London, home to thousands of anatomical exhibits
Pictured: Jennifer Sutton’s native heart exhibit. Visitors can follow her story in the film Transforming Lives where Jennifer and her surgeon Stephen Large talk about Jennifer’s life-saving heart transplant
The museum has just undergone a five-year, £100 million refit.
The surgery’s success was all the more poignant because Jennifer’s mother died following a heart transplant when Jennifer was just 13.
Jennifer always assumed there was something wrong with her heart, but things came to a head when she studied Animal Science at Portsmouth University.
She said, “I always assumed something was wrong because I was slower than other kids. At school I struggled with sports.
“But nothing was done about it until I went to college. I was in my sophomore year when a friend at the time noticed that I seemed to have a hard time walking up hills, turning blue a lot and getting out of breath. My face was blue and so were my lips and fingers.’
She went to a GP who immediately called 999 and she was taken to hospital with suspected heart failure where she stayed for two weeks.’
She was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart becomes increasingly stiff over time and has difficulty pumping blood around the body.
It was the same condition her mother had.
She received drug treatment but was listed to await surgery in 2007 and underwent a heart transplant in June of the same year.
Describing the moment her heart was removed, she said, “I woke up and I was pink, my fingers had blood, my cheeks were warm, and I felt my heart beating — for the first time in, what seemed like, forever.”
“I felt great, and I woke up and I thought, ‘I’m alive’ and I did a little dance.”
The new heart allowed Jennifer to pursue a career as a park ranger in the New Forest, an active career she never would have had had she not had surgery, and to pursue active hobbies. She has climbed Snowdonia with pride.
And it enabled her to marry her husband, Tom Evans, a software engineer, in June.
Jennifer was not surprised by the idea of her heart becoming a museum exhibit, as her father worked as a researcher at the Natural History Museum, and she happily agreed to put it on display.
The heart is kept in Kaiserling solution, a mixture of glycerin, sodium acetate and distilled water.
It appears pale and narrower than a healthy heart, due to the stiffness of the heart muscle.
Her surgeon, Mr. Stephen Large, said: “It’s extraordinary to see Jennifer’s heart.” He added that he hoped it would encourage many more people to sign up for organ donation.
He said: ‘The real problem is not a lack of funds, but a lack of donors. It not only benefits the recipient, but also the family who has lost a loved one, and it is a great comfort to them.’
Currently, the waiting time for a heart transplant on the NHS is between 18 months and two years.