Heart transplant giving Clinton girl new lease on life
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- Jabri Fox
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- Jabri Fox recovering at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital after receiving a heart transplant in November 2023.
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- Jabri Fox recovering at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital after receiving a heart transplant in November 2023.
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- Jabri Fox
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- Jabri Fox recovering at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital after receiving a heart transplant in November 2023.
CLINTON — Until the fall of 2022, Jabri Thompson was a very healthy 10-year-old girl. Two months later, she was on the heart transplant list.
“She went to Disneyland, and when she got home, we all got COVID,” said Jabri’s mother, Casey Thompson. “But her symptoms were different and she wasn’t really riding it out. She was throwing up a lot, so I took her to InstaCare and they sent us home with Zofran (an anti-nausea medication) and an inhaler.”
A few days later, Thompson returned home from work (she and her husband, Hunter, own a salon and were in the process of opening the business when Jabri fell ill) and said Jabri was still throwing up and actually had a green tint to her skin, so she put her in the car and drove straight to her primary care physician’s office without an appointment. Thinking she may have appendicitis, the doctor sent the young girl for a CT scan.
It wasn’t her appendix, her mother said. Turns out, she had a severely enlarged heart, liver and gallbladder. The doctor said she needed to get to Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital immediately.
“She had never been sick in her life, except for the occasional minor things like a cold,” Thompson said. “We were in shock.”
Once at the children’s hospital, Jabri was given a test called an echocardiogram, an ultrasound used to see the structure of the heart and how well it pumps blood.
“I was laying there and the girl doing the echo jumped up and ran out of the room really fast,” Jabri said. “Then all of a sudden there were all these doctors in my room. I think there were around 15 of them.”
Jabri was in heart failure, the doctors said, a condition in which the heart doesn’t effectively pump blood throughout the body, and she needed to be taken to the intensive care unit. Jabri’s type of heart failure was diagnosed as dilated cardiomyopathy, where the heart’s chambers are enlarged and the walls of the heart muscle are weakened.
“The reason she was throwing up so much is because the stomach is the last organ to receive blood from the heart,” Thompson said. “So she couldn’t process any food at all.”
Jabri was being treated for her condition, but unfortunately it didn’t work well. She had also been placed on a feeding tube. Thirty days into her hospital stay, she was told if she wanted to live, she needed to be placed on the heart transplant list.
“I was like, ‘What?’ This is just crazy,” Thompson said. “We had to go through all of these tests and take counseling classes. I had no idea there was so much involved. Anyhow, my husband, Hunter, had gone home to move her bedroom upstairs and about six hours after she was placed on the list, they came in and woke us up and told us they had a heart for her.”
Thompson said the family was told Jabri’s wait for a heart was the shortest in history at the hospital.
“It was just a complete miracle,” she said. “On Nov. 13, she had the transplant and it took 9 1/2 hours. The surgeon told us he was going to have her home by Thanksgiving and she went home the day before. She was doing really well.”
Jabri said: “I felt really good. I could walk and I had a lot more energy, but then I started to feel bad again. It was about a year later, I think. I was weak and my arms were really heavy so I woke my mom up and said I didn’t feel right.”
Although she was taking 17 anti-rejection medications a day, Jabri’s body began to reject the new heart and she returned to the hospital, where she spent another 14 days in the ICU, and was given plasma to help her body fight off the rejection.
“It worked,” Thompson said. “She hasn’t had a problem since. She’s just living life like a normal 13-year-old kid, except for the fact that she has to go to the doctor for a lot of checkups and tests.”
Jabri said she feels great today, and she said she already knows she wants to be a cardiologist or a nurse when she gets older, to pay it forward and help others in similar circumstances.
Six months after her transplant, she said, she received a letter from the donor family. The donor was a 27-year-old father of two who was involved in an ATV accident.
“I had a lot of mixed feelings when I got the letter,” Jabri said. “It was emotional for me because this man lost his life, but I also feel so grateful to him for being a donor.”
Casey Thompson said if she’s learned one thing, it’s to advocate for your kids.
“If something isn’t right, keep pushing for answers,” she said. “We got sent home a lot, but I listened to my mom’s intuition and I prayed a lot.”
Jabri said several things helped her during her health scare. Her siblings have all kept a close eye on her and remind her every day to take her medicine — even her 5-year-old sister, she said. Her dogs also stick very close by and provide a lot of comfort, and her parents never left her side.
“My dogs have always been really in tune,” Jabri said. “I had a dog named Copper when I got sick and he knew something was wrong with me.”
Thompson said her daughter’s heart is supposed to last 10 to 20 years before she may need a new one.
“But who knows what technology will be out by then,” she said. “There may be something really easy. But in the meantime, we’re living life as usual and taking it one day at a time. We are so grateful. Our neighbors brought meals to us for about 30 days and everyone was incredibly kind and helpful. This whole thing has been miraculous.”
