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All the Wayne mother cares to know is that it’s given her more lives than that of her own.
“It’s not a death sentence,” said DeMayo of her 2008 heart transplant. “It’s hard for people to wrap their minds around because all they can think is death — but it’s not.”
Two years after undergoing the procedure, DeMayo became the first heart transplant patient in the world to give birth to identical twins.
Her life came full circle in 2014 when she gave birth to a baby boy, Luciano Vincent. The mother had ended a pregnancy with her first son in 2005 at 20 weeks when doctors warned her heart could give out.
“The first baby is the one who saved our lives,” said DeMayo just after putting 2-year-old Luciano down for a nap. “That’s made all that heartache, pain and suffering a lot easier.”
In November 2005 and several weeks into her first pregnancy, DeMayo fell ill and checked herself into a hospital. After being transferred to another location, doctors found DeMayo had an enlarged heart.
While they promised they’d do everything they could to save the baby, it became too much for DeMayo’s body.
“They were pumping so much medication into me. I felt like they were killing me,” she said. “I wanted to go home and live whatever life I had left because that was awful."
Three weeks later, she ended the pregnancy. The meds kept coming — despite the fact that doctors didn't know if the concoction was properly treating DeMayo's condition.
For almost three years, DeMayo was on and off prescriptions. She was in and out of hospitals. She was ready to give up.
The turning point came, however, when her legs swelled up in January 2008. Doctors said she'd “most likely” need a transplant.
“If I never took the initiative to come off the medication, who knows how long it would’ve kept masking my true symptoms?” she said.
DeMayo will never know the reasoning behind her enlarged heart. Maybe it was an infected tooth. Maybe it was just a fluke.
Either way, it doesn’t matter.
“Life is different now,” DeMayo said. “I love more.”
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