Jennifer Sutton has had a unique experience this year that few may ever claim to have. She visited her own heart in a museum display for the second time in her life. In 2007, Jennifer found she had trouble with moderate exercise such as walking up hills as a university student. She received a diagnosis of restrictive cardiomyopathy which restricts the heart’s ability to pump blood around the body and she needed a new heart to replace hers.
Her health worsened quickly but luckily, she had a donor who was a match. Despite having reservations about the surgery, as her mother had died of the same surgery when Jennifer was just 13 years old, the operation was a success. She found herself visiting her original heart only a few months later at the Wellcome Collection medical museum. Describing her feelings at the time, she said ‘seeing my heart for the first time is an emotional and surreal experience’.
During her recent visit to see her heart this year, now at the Hunterian Museum in London, she said ‘It’s been 16 fantastic years and I wouldn’t have had any of them without my donor’. She added that she hoped it would promote organ donation and that it was ‘the greatest gift possible’.