Fourteen days. It was the shocking prognosis that left Sydney parents Amanda and Phillip in a state of despair, holding on to hope that someone, somewhere, would donate a heart for their 13-year-old daughter. Without the perfect match, Scarlett had just a fortnight to live.
Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today “Every night we would cry. It was another day gone, another day without a heart,” Amanda tells 7Life of the impossibly heartbreaking life or death countdown. “I don’t think people realise, with organ donation, that one donor doesn’t just save seven lives — they can save hundreds more through tendons, tissues, corneas etc.
” Remarkably, Scarlett, who is now 17, was one of the lucky ones. Eight days into the hunt for a new heart, she successfully underwent a transplant. And — in a twist of events, after doctors were able to take healthy parts of her heart — the 13-year-old ended up saving a life herself.
“The odds were against us. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong,” Amanda says. Although Scarlett was born healthy, the mum says, looking back, there were certainly early signs of a heart defect.
The schoolgirl complained of breathlessness, unable to keep up at running events, and of general heart discomfort. For six months, doctors thought she would grow out of her fast-beating heart. But at age 10, she was running around the playground when her chest discomfort suddenly became unbearable.
Scarlett’s heart was pumping so fast.