Your Local Guide to Better Living
HEALTH
Winter 2020
INSIDE This Issue
BEAUTY .............. 6 Celebrate your beauty interpretation at any age
HOME INSTEAD ...11 New facility provides better care to Sun City and surrounding communities
SENIOR LIVING ....18 Luxury accommodations at affordable prices
WELLNESS Special Supplement to The Glendale Star and Peoria Times
Peoria girl is thriving thanks to heart transplant BY CHRISTINA FUOCO-KARASINSKI
Brittany Johnson describes her 5-yearold daughter Daisy as sweet, sassy and fun. She loves doing puzzles, coloring, building with Lego and dancing. Most of all, she enjoys playing with her 7-year-old brother, Zev. Daisy is living a full life thanks to a heart transplant she had at 10 weeks old. The Peoria girl was born with an unbalanced atrioventricular canal defect, a congenital condition that occurs in two out of every 10,000 newborns. Brittany said doctors at Phoenix Children’s Hospital had to resort to a heart transplant when Daisy had a hard time recovering from a less-invasive surgery. “The doctors at Phoenix Children’s Hospital tried one in a series of three surgeries, but she had a hard time recovering,” Brittany said. “They thought a transplant was the best option.” Daisy is doing well, although winter is difficult for her because she takes immunosuppressive drugs meant to suppress transplant rejection. In December, Daisy competed in the first Arizona Transplant Games in Chandler, a state-level competition Team Arizona held to promote membership for its team in anticipation of the 2020 Donate Life Transplant Games this summer in New Jersey. “She had a blast,” Brittany said. “Last summer she competed in the national games in Salt Lake. We went up there and she competed in cornhole, the youth Olympiad and the 25-meter dash. “It was such a cool experience to be there with so many other recipients and donor families, recipients, donor families and living donors. It’s such a powerful experience.”
Brittany Johnson, left, found out her daughter Daisy had a heart defect before she was born. Now Daisy enjoys playing with her 7-year-old brother Zev and her father Matt, third from left. (Photo courtesy Brittany Johnson)
Brittany, and her husband Matt, found out about Daisy’s defect at Brittany’s 20week anatomy ultrasound. “My OB told me there was something wrong with the baby’s heart,” Brittany said. “She referred me to a pediatric cardiologist. Three weeks later, she was diagnosed with an unbalanced atrioventricular canal defect. “He watched her throughout my pregnancy and saw her once she was born. When we took her in for her one-month check-up, he noticed she was breathing hard.”
The pediatric cardiologist sent her for an X-ray that showed she had congestive heart failure. That’s what necessitated the surgery. “What helped was from the time she was diagnosed we always had a plan,” Brittany said. “While it was scary, we had a plan to treat her. It has definitely been hard. There wasn’t another choice and we had to do it for her. She’s been a fighter since day one. She’s really the one who keeps me fighting.”