Amazing Things NYP

Jessa Scott NYP

http://nyp.org/amazingthings/jessa.html

Every day for Jessa is a fight.

She was born with a hole in her heart. As a result, she developed pulmonary hypertension. For most of her life, she never knew what it felt like to breathe normally.  “Imagine pinching your nose and breathing through a small straw. That’s what breathing feels like for me on a daily basis.”

Eventually, her lungs began to fail and she was unable to breathe at all, even with oxygen. She was put on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation). And then she went to the top of the list to receive a double lung transplant. A few days later, Jessa received her new lungs. She says, “I was a young girl that almost wasn’t here anymore. I woke up after my operation and I didn’t have a heart murmur anymore. I didn’t have pulmonary hypertension. They took my ECMO away, they took everything off, and I was in nine hours transformed into a completely healthy individual. You go from dying, being someone that’s about to die, in nine hours to a completely healthy individual.” It took seven medical teams to give Jessa what she always dreamed of. A normal life.