Sarah Brown
It took nearly a lifetime for Vicky Johnson to decide she was ready for a heart transplant, but only a few short minutes to find out she was about to get one.
The Sweet Home resident was given the heart of a 14-year-old girl in March 2016. The heart belonged to Isabel Santoro, a child from northern California who took her own life.
Now, two years later, Johnson was given the opportunity to meet Isabel’s mom, Lauren Santoro.
The two met for the first time on Friday, July 20, at the Donate Life NW office in Portland, where Santoro was able to listen to her daughter’s heart for the first time since she died two years ago.
“The decision to donate Isabel’s organs seemed natural and right,” Santoro said at the meeting. “Knowing the good that has come from our tragedy has restored hope.”
She explained that her daughter was interested in a career in medicine. Isabel’s liver, kidneys and skin were also donated, which saved and improved the quality of life for nine people, including Johnson’s.
“This is her contribution to medicine,” Santoro said.
Johnson, who’s now 60 years old, was diagnosed with congestive heart failure when she was 12.
“It didn’t get really bad until 2014,” she said. “They had kept trying to get me to do a heart transplant then, and I was too scared. I was scared to death. And now, how fast I received one, I just don’t think it was meant to be then. It was meant to be when it happened.”
Her heart output was functioning at 8 percent in 2016, and she was told she had, at most, one week to live. Johnson was sleeping all the time and had been using a scooter for about two years, she said. She would run out of breath just walking a few feet.
Finally, Johnson went to OHSU to be placed on the donor list and prepare to receive a heart pump until a real heart could be found, but her wait was only five minutes.
“They came in the room and said, ‘We have a perfect match heart for you.’
“I said, ‘What? I can’t take all this in right now.'”
The next morning, Johnson received Isabel’s heart and spent the next 14 months recovering from surgery.
“I just feel wonderful,” she said. “It took me a year to heal, and now I feel like a 14-year-old. I just can’t believe it.”
Johnson had heard tidbits about the donor, but knew very little until she contacted Isabel’s family this year.
“They said to wait (a year and half) because while I was celebrating, they were mourning,” Johnson said.
After corresponding and talking to Isabel’s family on the phone, she learned the young girl had been bullied and took her own life.
“It just breaks my heart that it was a little girl. I’ve got grandkids that age. I just couldn’t imagine.”
Johnson plans on going to Sacramento during the school year to do a presentation on bullying, and to let Isabel’s friends listen the heart that lives on.
“I am so grateful to have that little girl’s heart,” Johnson said at the meeting. “My goal in life is just to make her as happy and proud of me as possible.”
Johnson wanted to give a special thanks to the community of Sweet Home for their support during the transplant.
“They had my back the whole way,” she said. “It was rough.
“I owe this town so much for being behind me,” she said. “The prayers and the love for me that came from this town was phenomenal.