AT 21 years of age and 37 weeks’ pregnant, Leonnee Pinchen-Martin was diagnosed with a life-threatening heart condition.
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She now lives life day-by-day with a LVAD (left ventricle assist device) as she waits for a heart transplant.
Ms Pinchen-Martin was diagnosed with peri-partum cardiomyopathy, which her father had also suffered from but the family didn’t know about until he died of a heart attack when Leonnee was young.
“Twenty-one is very young to be diagnosed with this and we didn’t know exactly what it was before Levi (her 10-month-old son) was born,” she said.
“We didn’t realise how bad it was until I had an emergency caesarean because the stress of labour would have killed me and the baby. We were more worried about the baby than me, but after the baby was born, it really hit home.”
The Tamworth resident was living in Sydney at the time working as an art director – her dream job – when she was diagnosed.
“A few months after the birth the doctors started talking about a heart transplant,” she said.
Ms Pinchen-Martin, her partner, Joe Stolker, and Levi moved home to Tamworth to be with her mum, Kath Martin, who had become a live-in nanny for the couple in Sydney.
She was home a week and her body started to shut down.
The seriously-ill 21-year-old was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital and was fitted with the LVAD, which she will have connected to her until she finds a heart donor.
“The doctors need to find a match who needs to be a young female with the same blood type,” Ms Pinchen-Martin said.
Finding a match is more difficult because she’s had blood transfusions that have introduced foreign antibodies.
“The average wait for a transplant is six months, but it could be a day, it could be five years,” Ms Pinchen-Martin said.
“I just try to forget about it but when the phone rings at unusual times, you wonder who it is.”
Her friends have rallied around and two of them are putting their bodies to the test in the Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon in May.
High school friends Megan Gill and Alicia Sullivan will run the Sydney half marathon on May 20 under the team name of Love and Hearts.
It’s their first half marathon, but Alicia has been a runner in a triathlon previously.
The three girls went to McCarthy Catholic College together and the runners aim to raise $5000 for St Vincent’s Hospital cardiac unit.
They have raised $1382 so far.
To support Ms Pinchen-Martin and other cardiac patients at St Vincent’s Hospital, donate to Love and Hearts by going to the website at www.everydayhero.com.au/love_
hearts.
Meanwhile, Leonnee is making the most of life with Levi as she waits patiently for that life-changing telephone call.
