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Normalcy is 'perfect' life after transplant

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The Orlando Sentinel

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 4, 2009

ORLANDO - Gracyn DenBesten sat in her hospital bed and held out her hands.

Her doctors placed an enlarged, discolored-looking blob in her palm.

It was her failed heart.

It was time to say goodbye.

That gray mass once beat inside her chest, pumping blood, giving her life. But a virus attacked it, rendering it useless. She was rushed to Arnold Palmer Hospital on Christmas Eve and lay dying, deliriously screaming, "I'm going to die! I'm going to die!"

Her organs began shutting down. Little Gracyn, then 9, needed a heart transplant to survive. She was transferred to Shands Hospital in Gainesville, where an artificial heart kept her alive for nearly four months.

On April 15, she got her new heart. Incredibly, she returned home two weeks later.

Now she is trying to resume her normal life with her parents Robin and Kris, who own an industrial equipment business, and her brothers Cole, 11, and Brooks, 7.

"I'm really happy to be at home," says Gracyn, who just turned 10. "If my life could be perfect, this is what it would be like.

"I'm alive and healthy and at my home with my friends and I can do normal stuff again."

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