New Heart Makes Teen Feel Like a Different Person

An area teenager's  dream of a normal life now seems to be coming true. Fifteen-year-old Dalton Igoe of Altoona  was  born with a severe heart defect that limited both his activities and his size. In recent years ,  medical complications threatened his life. That started to change about seven weeks ago.

Ten days after being put high on the transplant list due to his deteriorating condition, Dalton headed to Pittsburgh's Children's Hospital for his new heart 

The operation went  well but then,  Dalton's body started rejecting the new heart. His mother Dawn says,  "those first two weeks were the hardest weeks we ever went through after the transplant."  But medication including a chemotherapy drug he still takes, reduced the signs of rejection and Dalton kept improving.

Now he's energized, saying, " I feel like a different person, because before the transplant I couldn't even like run like a couple feet without, being  in pain,  and now I can run around the block without getting short of breath."

And his mother adds, "it's already hard to keep him down this week and a half we've been home.  He's already asking to run, he's been playing baseball in the yard, going off the diving board, swimming."

 Dalton and his mom now have a new goal, spreading the word to families about the need for organ donation, especially involving children.  Dawn explains, "if it wasn't for a loving family donating this hear we'd still be waiting."

She says Dalton has a  common blood type, so he was able to get a donor heart more quickly.  Some children with a rarer blood type are sent home with palliative care,  because no matching organ becomes available for them.

The Igoes will be working with CORE  in a new campaign promoting organ donation.