The Five Mile Trail

Today I walked five miles.

The sun was shining, and the air held that perfect autumn-day crispness. We had the trail mostly to ourselves—Christine, Millie, and me—and we talked freely, filling the miles with whatever drifted into our minds.

Five miles. What a privilege.

At one point, we passed a neighborhood friend, Megan. She commented on how fast we were—and we were, moving along at a pace of fifteen or sixteen minutes per mile. Without missing a beat, Millie and Christine both said, “Well, Fiauna has a new, young heart. It wants to go fast!”

I have a 21-year-old heart.

That’s a fact that still brings me to tears. My donor was only nineteen years old when her life ended and her heart was donated to extend mine.

After my transplant, while I was still in the hospital, the social worker came to my room during a rare moment of privacy and asked if I wanted to know what little information she was allowed to share about my donor. Surprisingly, I had to think about it.

Did I really want to know?

It seems like such an obvious question, but after everything I had been through, I had to ask myself how much I truly wanted to carry. That information felt sacred somehow. Holding any knowledge at all felt like a responsibility I wasn’t sure I was capable of bearing. It’s hard to explain exactly why. There are good things and hard things that come with knowing. We are all just human, after all, and sometimes the magic you hope and pray for can also break your heart.

While I was waiting for transplant, I heard all the anecdotes about organ transplants and personality changes—believe me. My father-in-law shared, more than once, a story about a man in his church who received a heart from a thirteen-year-old girl and went on to develop her personality traits, right down to an uncontrollable case of the giggles. While I understood there were logical explanations—medications, trauma, the body adjusting—it still colored how I felt in that moment when I was given the chance to learn about my donor.

When the social worker told me my donor was female and between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, I couldn’t stop the immediate cascade—no, the deluge—of tears. My own children were that same age.

Who was I to take a heart? To take life, opportunity, learning, and growth from someone so young?

I still haven’t found an answer.

Nine months after my transplant, I wrote a letter and sent it to my social worker, hoping it would eventually reach my donor’s family. I didn’t need a response; I simply wanted to say thank you. It felt like the right thing to do.

Then, the following February—ironically, on the very day I learned my thyroid cancer had returned—I received a letter in return. It was from my donor’s mother.

My donor was Ella.

She was a medical assistant and a nursing student. A dancer. A lover of music. She and her mother were very close. Precious.

There’s something that happens when someone comes close to dying—or, in my case, receives a heart transplant. You feel a responsibility to live an extraordinary life, to somehow make the second chance, the gift of an organ, worth it. I’ve wrestled with this more than I care to admit.

I don’t want to go back to college and complete a nursing degree in her honor. I don’t feel healthy enough to run a marathon or climb a famous fourteen-thousand-foot peak. Maybe someday I’ll create a charitable trust or do something meaningful in the realm of organ donation.

But for now—for today—I will walk five miles.

I will breathe in the crisp autumn air and feel the steady rhythm of this 21-year-old heart. And that will be enough.