One girl, two hearts!

This is pretty amazing if you ask me. Fourteen years ago young Hannah Clark (she was two) was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and had to have open heart surgery to save her life. However, the doctors that performed the surgery did not simply remove her heart and implant the donor, instead they grafted the new heart right on to her old one (see original story for diagrams). Because she was a transplant recipient she had to take lots of drugs to suppress her immune system so that her body would not reject/devour the new organ. This eventually led to her developing a certain form of cancer that is common for people with organ transplants, so the doctors removed her donor heart in order to get her off the immune suppressing drugs and treat her for the cancer. When they did this, they found that her original heart had managed to heal itself during the time that the donor was doing most of the work. Amazing!