CAPE GIRARDEAU WOMAN MARKS FIRST DECADE WITH DONATED HEART

A lot has changed in Donna Renschen's life during the past 10 years, and for that she is thankful. While they weren't all glamorous things, she relishes in the simplicity of her life.

After heart transplant surgery 10 years ago, life took on new meaning for Renschen, of Cape Girardeau. She marked the anniversary Friday by spending the day with her children and grandchildren.

It was 10 years ago Sept. 8 that she had an eight-hour transplant surgery at St. Louis University Hospital. Without that surgery "I wouldn't be here today," Renschen said.

Thanks to an organ donor, Renschen, 40, is living a full life today and enjoying every moment of it. She is less tired and not as ill, although she still is susceptible to viruses.

"When I got sick it hit me hard," she said of her initial diagnosis. She was unable to work because of her condition: cardiomyopathy, which is a disease caused when the heart gets enlarged and restricts blood flow to the body.

It took Renschen two years of waiting on the transplant list before her surgery. She had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure for 16 years before surgery was warranted.

She remembers little of the day except that it was "a beautiful flight" from the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport to Lambert Airport in St. Louis. An ambulance was waiting to take her to the hospital. "I think I was still in shock," she said.

Doctors think her condition was brought on by a virus that settled in the bottom of her heart. Her daughter suffers from a similar condition, but doctors don't know whether it is hereditary.

Her daughter, Trisha, remembers the transplant surgery as being a scary experience for the family. People kept telling her that her mother might not make it through the surgery, she said. "That's probably not a good thing to tell an 11-year-old," Trisha Renschen said.

Yet Trisha Renschen knows how much of a difference the surgery made in her mother's life. "She'd be tired and take naps during the day because she was weak," Trisha Renschen said.

Now she has more energy. "Some days I'm just rambunctious," Donna Renschen said.

That energy has come in handy with two toddlers living in the house. Trisha's children, Martez, 4, and Toriana, 2, "keep me busy," Donna Renschen said. "They're my life. That's what I live for," she said as Toriana ran through the living room on her way outside.

Without the surgery Renschen knows she wouldn't have survived to see her grandchildren born. At its worst, her heart condition made even simple things like carrying groceries or heavy loads of laundry into the house exhausting, she said.

She would often get out of breath and would tire frequently during the day.

Since the surgery "I haven't been as sick as I usually was," Renschen said. "And I thank God for that every day. I've been blessed, and it's a miracle."

However, she is still recovering from a recent bout of pneumonia that settled in her right lung. She is more susceptible to colds and viruses like pneumonia and bronchitis since her surgery. Renschen said that before the surgery she was constantly in and out of hospitals.

"Now they are good days and bad days," she said. "You have to press yourself to the limit."

Renschen wasn't ever able to thank the family of the organ donor. All she knows is that her heart is four years younger than she and it was donated by the family of a woman killed in an accident in St. Louis.

The family chose to remain anonymous, she said. "But I would have thanked them" for their donation. "I tell people it saves lives."