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Going a step beyond means Miss Vinnie can embrace life’s precious moments.
When Lavinia ‘Vinnie’ Brooks was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, her life took an unexpected turn.
She started having difficulty breathing and experienced extreme fatigue, headaches and chest pains. While the diagnosis came as a shock, it was just the beginning of the difficult journey ahead for Vinnie and her family.
The gravity of Vinnie’s diagnosis eventually became very clear. As she recalls, "I was sitting with my son Tony when I suddenly felt dizzy. The next thing I know, my face was on the floor and I was lying in a puddle of blood."
After collapsing three more times, Vinnie was rushed to the hospital and told her heart was too weak for her to leave. She would need a heart transplant.
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Enter OneLegacy, an Organ Procurement Organization that recovers organs and tissues for life-saving transplants.
OneLegacy works closely with transplant teams who fly in to conduct time-sensitive donation surgeries. To make sure all these operations are safe and reduce the risk of organ rejection for the recipients, they gather a number of tubes of blood before each procedure to check for infectious disease, organ function and to determine what their HLA profile is.
None of this testing would have been possible without Thermo Fisher Scientific, the company that makes the HLA tests.
Peter Diep, Director of Product Management at Thermo Fisher Scientific, states its importance: “HLA testing is a vital part of the process so patients and donors are matched and determined to be compatible.”
Not only has this testing transformed organ donation locally, but it has also left a mark nationwide. It’s become the go-to system and methodology for all organ donors and transplant recipients across the country.
After 6 long months in the ICU, Vinnie finally received a new heart. The drumming of her failing heart had been an unwelcome soundtrack to her life. Yet, emerging from the anesthesia, she awakened to an unfamiliar, blissful quietude.
Thanks to the dedication and collaboration between OneLegacy and Thermo Fisher Scientific, Vinnie now looks forward to embracing life's precious moments - a future she once feared would never be possible.
