Heart transplant recipient shares story as new donor care facility opens in east valley

For someone waiting for an organ transplant, one phone call can mean a second chance at life.

Breanna Love knows what that moment can mean. She was just 11 years old when her health suddenly took a life-threatening turn.

Love said she had been a healthy, active child who danced and played flag football before she began experiencing serious health problems.

I was a completely healthy kid," Love said. "I had danced for most of my life. I played flag football even, Love said.

After several trips to emergency rooms in the Las Vegas area, Love said doctors discovered fluid in her lungs.

After going to a couple of the ERs here in town, I want to say three, they had finally said that they had found fluid in my lungs, she said.

Love was diagnosed with sudden heart failure and said her family was told she had just three days to live.

She remembers being at Sunrise Hospital when her family began calling relatives.

They all, I thought they were just saying hi, but they were actually saying goodbye because they really didn't think that I was going to get a heart transplant in time, Love said.

But the call her family desperately needed eventually came.

Love received a heart transplant within two weeks.

Now 21 years old, she works with Donor Network of Nevada, helping advocate for others whose lives could depend on organ donation.

Theres over 700 Nevadans waiting here for a transplant," Love said. "So any way that we can help, wed absolutely love to."

On Tuesday, Donor Network of Nevada opened an in-house donor care unit in the east valley designed to streamline parts of the organ and tissue donation process.

Gordon Poutry, president of the Donor Network of Nevada Foundation, said the facility will allow donors to be transported there for recovery and support tissue and ocular donation.

This will allow us to be able to transport a donor here for recovery. It will also be able to streamline our process for tissue and ocular donation, Poutry said. We really believe, we know, that it will also help increase outcomes.

The facility also holds special meaning for donor families like Courtney Kaplans.

Kaplans son, Michael, became an organ donor at 18 years old after dying in a motorcycle crash. She said his donations helped six families.

To see where my life is now and the impact that Michaels gift of life had on six beautiful families, it not only gave a second chance at life to our recipients, I call them our recipients, but for me, its a second chance at life for me, Kaplan said.

For Love, her own second chance came when another family made the decision to give.

More than a decade later, she is using that second chance to help others who are still waiting for theirs.