Teen’s organs saved four lives including Destrehan woman
When Cameron’s mother put a stethoscope to Jamie Napolitano’s chest and heard her son’s beating heart, it was a powerfully defining moment about the importance of organ donation for both donor family and recipient.
“They were so gracious,” Napolitano recalled of meeting the parents of then 19-year-old Cameron whose organs saved many people. “You always worry as a recipient whether they’re glad they made this decisions and am I doing what they want to honor this gift. When we met in person, they said to me, ‘Jaime, we feel this is just the way God intended it to be.’”
The significance of receiving a heart and all it has brought to her life has remained so important to this Destrehan resident, who has become devoted to raising awareness about organ donation.
To further the cause, Napolitano is raising funds to return to next year’s Transplant Games in Cleveland, Ohio, an Olympic-style event for organ recipients and living donors. Anytime Fitness in Destrehan is holding Ride for Life events where participants ride stationary bikes as fundraisers.
She also volunteers with the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency to “put a face to organ donation” by telling others what getting a transplant has meant to her and her family. She also wants to dispel misconceptions about being an organ donor.
“People see things on TV programs and movies that just don’t happen,” she said. “Some people don’t donate for fear that doctors my not do everything to save them to get the organs. Some people think it’s against their religion while most religions, not only agree with organ donations, but it’s considered the last charitable thing you can do for someone else. Some people think they can’t have an open casket funeral if they donate and that’s not true.”
What is true is more than 120,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for an organ, Napolitano said. Twenty-two people die everyday waiting for a donation.
She experienced this fear firsthand when her near lifelong struggle with heart disease (possibly caused by a virus) went critical slightly more than seven years ago.
“It was progressively getting worse and my history of heart disease was for so long,” Napolitano said, who was 33 years old at the time. “I was just slowly going down. It was just not getting better or working. The worry was some of my other organs would start going bad with the fluid build-up in my body because my heart wasn’t pumping hard enough.”
Doctors said her heart was functioning at 40 percent or less capacity, which required three defibrillators to keep beating. She well knew what it felt like to be shocked by them. Medicines weren’t working anymore either.
Her husband started videotaping her with their children and she knew why.
Napolitano’s health had degraded to the point of him wanting to preserve their time together so they would remember her. Her thoughts shifted to her not being there for her children to help with their homework or proms or teaching them how to drive – it all became so overwhelming.
For the couple to have children, her sister stepped in and gave birth to them.
“My heart almost burst with joy when we discovered that she was carrying twins,” said Napolitano, who devoted herself to caring for her children (a boy and a girl).
But she struggled with fatigue, nausea and lack of energy, which she mistook as part of the demands of being a mother. Instead, Napolitano learned her heart function was down to only 20 percent.
The time had come to be placed on the donor list for a heart.
Napolitano was among the unfortunate and then fortunate ones waiting for a heart.
On the first day listed, she was notified about a possible transplant, but an assessment determined someone else was a better candidate for that heart. Two weeks later another call came on New Year’s Day and her transplant came the next day.
“I was a little bit nervous,” she said in anticipation of the surgery. “I thought that day it would be the day, but nothing happened by 5 p.m. I was kind of discouraged.”
The surgery was so delicate that Napolitano said her having a slight fever would have sent the heart to someone else. She tearfully recounted how her family gathered in the room to comfort her and say goodbye in case the procedure didn’t work.
But it did work and impressively well.
“After a few days after the surgery, I knew my life was going to be better with this healthy heart,” she said of sitting up watching Collge Bowl games by Jan. 2. “It was pretty immediate that I knew the hard part was over. It was pretty powerful even that first day waking up.”
While still in the hospital, she said one of those moments came when she expressed concern over thinking she had a fever.
“My ears were warm,” she said of expressing worry to the medical staff about a fever. “The nurse asked what was wrong and then said, ‘Jamie, you have circulation and that’s how it feels.’”
The revelations with her new life did not stop there.“I changed how I worked to spend more time with the kids,” Napolitano said. “Time goes by so fast. We’ve had so many special and important moments.”
She has had zero rejection with the heart transplant with few side effects.
Napolitano is being trained for the 2016 Transplant Games by Danielle Nielsen, the wife of the late Brandon Neilsen, St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s deputy who was shot and killed in 2012. Nielsen and her husband had planned to exercise together, but even when that changed she continued doing it and became a trainer.
The Rides for Life will be held Nov. 20 and Feb. 26, all at the Anytime Fitness in Destrehan. Each will be a one-hour ride on stationary bikes for $30 each.
Also, while it took more than four years, Napolitano connected with Cameron’s parents and they’ve become friends. In one of the emails she regularly sent to the family, she told them she was going to run track in the 2014 Transplant Games in Houston, which the father related to because their son also ran track. They met for the first time at the games and were there to cheer Napolitano on in the runs.
“It’s been a wonderful kind of redemption for my family, as well as Cameron,” she said. “Them knowing he saved lives gives them an incredible amount of peace.”
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