April 12, 2023
March 16, 2023
March 16, 2023
January 19, 2023
Dr. Alin Gragossian is a physician with dual certifications in emergency medicine and critical care. She’s also a heart transplant recipient. In what seemed like a split second, everything changed as she went from doctor to patient and changed the course of her career and her life forever.
A volunteer opportunity during high school was the spark Alin needed to ignite her passion for medicine. Born in L.A., she attended medical school in Tennessee before moving to the Philadelphia / New York area for residency. She knew she wanted to work in emergency medicine before beginning her residency, a demanding specialty known for its intensity. Being healthy throughout her life, Alin was up for the challenge. It was here everything began to change.
Towards the end of her emergency medicine residency, one of Alin’s attending physicians noticed unusual symptoms, like taking extended pauses to catch her breath. What Alin thought was just a cold turned out to be anything but, and after one shift, she left the ER only to return hours later, this time as a patient.
Doctors discovered that Alin, a seemingly healthy medical professional in her early thirties, was in acute heart failure. Later on, Alin found that the cause of her heart failure was familial dilated cardiomyopathy, which also affected her father.
She was listed for an emergency heart transplant and transferred from where she worked in Philadelphia to the University of Pennsylvania. Alin describes it as “going from normal, healthy adult to heart transplant patient” in weeks.
Around a week post-transplant, Alin got discharged from the hospital and went home to recover. In June, she returned to finish her residency with a renewed perspective, one that gave her the desire to get involved and raise awareness for the importance of organ donation and transplantation.
3-4 months post-transplant, Alin was able to make a connection with her donor family. Utilizing the local organ procurement agency (OPO), Alin exchanged formal letters with her donor’s mom, Laura. After a year, Alin and Laura decided they wanted to connect directly rather than relying on a third party, such as the hospital or OPO. This communication is how Alin began to learn about Lucy, her donor. Lucy also worked in the medical field. She was a respiratory therapist, loved animals, and had a big family. She was 23 when she died because of a sudden brain cyst rupture.
Recently, Alin had the opportunity to meet Laura and her family, an experience she describes as “a surreal, beautiful and bittersweet experience. A story that transcends life itself.”
Post-transplant patients often wonder where to find a community and who they can talk to. In our conversation, Alin highlights the need for peer-to-peer support. She searched hashtags and found connections with other transplant recipients through social media.
“There are tons of doctors I could talk to, but they are never going to understand what I’m going through,” Alin said. “They understand the science, but they don’t understand the needs of a specific patient. When I leave the hospital, I don’t always have the doctors. I need places to get that support.” She also notes that as a physician, while there are textbooks and medical journals, there needs to be more conversation with patients focusing on lived experience.
When I asked Alin for her thoughts on returning to work and reintegrating into life post-transplant, she shared many of the same concerns as her transplanted peers. Being young and just starting a career, there are many challenges in returning to “normal.” She poignantly described the necessity of processing the old life she was losing before she could integrate into her new life post-transplant. Even if there are many ways to go back to what life was before, the life that exists post-transplant will never be identical. Learning to live one day at a time, Alin says, focusing on the moment and knowing that things take time are what helped her transition to celebrate the life she has now.
Check out Both Sides of the Stethoscope, a podcast hosted by two heart transplant recipients and physicians, Alin by Alin Gragossian and Colby Salerno. You can connect with Alin on Instagram at @a_change_of_heart_blog.
Do you need support? Check out transplantlyfe.com and join our community!
December 13, 2022
November 2, 2022
Chloe Temtchine is a singer, songwriter and performer. She is also a double lung transplant recipient. And while the two identities may seem to be conflicting, Chloe has managed to bring them together in a way that exemplifies resilience and grace.
Chloe lived with multiple years of symptoms that no one could definitively diagnose. She tried out different doctors, treatments and hospitals, having all but given up. In 2013, after finishing an album and getting set for a world tour, Chloe suffered an episode that would land her in the emergency room and hand her the devastating diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary veno-occlusive disease. She was given labels like “terminal” and “chronic”, and she was told that without a transplant, her odds of survival were grim.
The drugs commonly used to treat pulmonary hypertension, she says, are not allowed in the treatment of pulmonary veno-occlusive disease, and the contraindications made her ineligible for many treatment options that were available. And so she went into research mode. Her options, she says, were to die or find a way to live, and her desire to live kicked in.
Determined to survive, and with the mindset that transplant would be the worst case scenario, Chloe began to put into practice what she calls her 5 key principles to change her life. Those 5 principles were mindset, diet, exercise, quality time with loved ones and creative expression.
Staring small, Chloe remembers when exercise meant walking from the bed to the bathroom. Her guiding principles did work when put into practice, and she did start to get better. Chloe improved in a way that seemed unattainable for someone with her diagnosis. Armed with her oxygen tank, whom she lovingly called Steve Martin, Chloe dove back into making music and living her life.
Until she unexpectedly got worse. While walking on the treadmill one day in her California home, her heart rate shot up to 175. Chloe went into cardiac arrest, and was placed on ECMO while the hunt for a pair of lungs began. There was no time to search for the perfect lungs, and the ones Chloe received were in no way ideal. But on August 5, 2020, she received her transplant.
She says it was like being born, not again, but for the first time. The time on ECMO had taken its toll on her body, and paralyzed vocal chords meant her singing career wasn’t secure. While somebody else may have taken these as signs to shift into a different phase of life, Chloe used them as fuel for the journey.
Her music shifted. “I wrote about superficial things pre-transplant,” she says. “I wrote for myself.” Currently working on a new album, now her music focuses on how far she’s come and the creative energy that fueled her survival.
“Music was my saving grace,” said Chloe. “It’s a form of expression. It inspired me, gave me peace. And everyone has their own version of that. As long as you’re breathing, there’s hope. There’s a way to do it.”
Rather than accept her diagnosis as a reason to never sing again, Chloe says she got creative and strategic in planning how she could still do what she loved, and not let her disease limit her life.
I asked Chloe how artistic expression helped her navigate post transplant life, and what advice she would offer to others. She said “Moments are what matter. This is your life, do what inspires you.”
“It would have been so easy to give up,” she explains, “but you just have to push through it. Keep going. The nightmare will hit you, but on the other side is this heavenly state.”
Pre-transplant, Chloe says she had this terrible idea of what a life with transplant looked like. And she’s glad to say none of that has been her experience.
While a struggle, her life has also been so incredible. With her second chance, Chloe now uses her music as a way to offer hope for others living with pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary veno-occlusive disease and other chronic illnesses.
In sharing her story, she raises awareness for organ donation and transplantation, and started both Brave Kids – a platform for children to turn their struggles into triumph – and the Chloe Temtchine foundation, which focuses on inspiring those living with pulmonary arterial hypertension through entertainment.
For all information on Chloe, links to her various social media accounts and to hear her music, you can go to www.chloetemtchine.com.
Written by Alisha Heibert