Mother’s second heart filled with love
Published 9:09 pm Monday, May 15, 2017
Photo by Donna Campbell/A year after her heart transplant, Doris Arnold is surrounded by her four children. Pictured are, from left: Lashanya Kelly, Patrick Shannon, Doris Arnold, Chris Arnold and Selina Arnold.
Photo by Donna Campbell/A year after her heart transplant, Doris Arnold is surrounded by her four children. Pictured are, from left: Lashanya Kelly, Patrick Shannon, Doris Arnold, Chris Arnold and Selina Arnold.
Doris Arnold’s second heart is filled with love for her family.
The Brookhaven woman wants to say thanks to the people who made that possible.
A year ago on Mother’s Day, Arnold was in a Jackson hospital praying for a transplant. Her four children — Chris Arnold, Selina Arnold, Lashanya Kelly and Patrick Shannon — had spent the day with her and made it home to Lincoln County when they got the call from her doctors.
A heart was available for their mom.
They rushed back to Jackson to wait through the all-night surgery.
Arnold had almost had two transplants already, but each time doctors discovered something wrong with the donor heart and the procedure was scrubbed.
But not this time.
After the surgery to place a stranger’s heart into her chest, Arnold slept for six days and nights. When she awoke, she said she felt like a new woman. Gradually, she got her energy back and hasn’t slowed down.
“Mama was always on the go,” said daughter Selina Arnold.
Her second oldest said it was tough to see her mother confined to a hospital bed, with machines keeping her heart pumping.
On Saturday, the family gathered in Selina Arnold’s front yard to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the successful operation.
“She got a second chance at life,” her daughter said. “I told her ‘Ma, you live life to the fullest, because you’ve got a second chance at life.’”
And that’s what Arnold’s trying to do. Her red sneakers were bouncing from table to table Saturday as she visited with family and friends who’d come for lunch and hugs.
She barely stopped long enough to shoot a basketball with the grandchildren and admire the heart-shaped cake baked just for her occasion.
Even though Arnold, 63, is overjoyed at her second chance, she doesn’t for a second forget that someone else had to die for her to live.
“I knew the Lord had one coming for me. I’d put my trust in him,” she said.
She wants to meet the family of her donor and invite them to be a part of her family.
“I really, really, really want to meet them,” she said. “I can’t thank them enough.”
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