His desire to shout to the world “What a wonderful life” they define it despite the fact that there have been many obstacles that it has had to overcome in order not to lose it. Manuela is one of those brave has had to look death in the face several times. In a one on one. Full of courage, she has always armed herself with strength and has kicked him telling him that she could do more.
He is one of those people who blows out the candles twice a year. In her case, each 6 of Aprilhis birthday, and October 9thday of his “birthday”. Almost five years ago she received a call that changed her life: there was a heart that could be a match for her. On October 9, 2017, she was transplanted and reborn.
Manuela La Haba is 49 years old and is from Alcaudete, a town in Jaén, but she has been living in Malaga for 13 years. Listening to her, it is difficult to understand how someone could have had so much courage to push forward despite so much suffering. When she was only seven years old, doctors diagnosed her un sarcoma de Ewing in the jaw. First setback of his life. “They told my parents clearly not to count on me.”remember.
He spent 16 months receiving chemotherapy and radiotherapy in Granada, a process “that can cure you, but also harm you.” Both things happened to Manuela. When the hospital didn’t trust her to come forward, she came out of it. But the chemotherapy damaged his heart a lot. At twelve years old she suffered multi-organ failure which caused a dilated myocardia that did not allow his heart to pump blood in the same way that a healthy heart does.
Science made him able to maintain a fairly normal life thanks to a medicine. She could work normally, she became a mother, and she even moved to Malaga to live. At 42, his heart began to fail him again.
He was aware that the disease he suffered from is chronic and that the situation could occur. Armed with courage, when she saw that “everything was going wrong again”, she put herself in the hands of the doctors. “Malaga cardiologists tried everything. I had a defibrillator on, I had some serums that kept me strong… Always avoiding transplantation, which is always the last optionManuela says.
They couldn’t do much more for her in Malaga. Her heart was getting weaker, so she was referred to Seville. “There they assess you to enter or not on the transplant waiting list. And finally I had to enter”she says, excited.
Manuela, with her kit. She always dedicated to donors.
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The days passed and the phone did not ring. Day after day, Manuela, far from being afraid to die, was saddened by how her son and her husband saw that she was fading more and more. “My husband came to put his hand on my chest one day and I hardly noticed my heartbeat. From time to time he would stop”.
Manuela spent her days at home. She couldn’t go to one of her friends’ houses, “even if I was sitting”. For her it was not enough, she had to lie down. When her son came home she tried to sit up as best she could so as not to worry him too much. “She couldn’t even take my dog out on the street. It was extreme tiredness. Only the one who passes it understands it, it’s something very strange“.
Every month I went to Seville, but the result was the same. “They told me that my heart was getting worse and worse. That he needed an operation, but there were no organs. It’s very hard,” he says.
a call of life
She has to swallow hard to explain what she experienced the day they called her, “a bittersweet day.” It was a day full of nerves, but never fear. “I was never afraid, I only knew that I was going to live and I entered with a smile. I was going to leave that operating room living. It was a happy day, because my life was not life at 44 years old”dice.
She can’t help but get emotional remembering how difficult it was for her to understand that that long-awaited and happy day at home was a day of mourning at another family’s home that, probably, he had just given the corresponding permission to donate the organs of a loved one. “My mother, a very believer, one day of those eight months she told me that she prayed for my heart, because she would arrive as soon as possible. But he felt really bad because he didn’t know if he was asking for someone to die.“, he says, in an ethical conflict.
Manuela emphasizes that she is alive thanks to her guardian angel and highlights the importance of raising awareness of the need for organ donation. “The situation I was in was not solved by medicine, it was solved by solidarity”declares.
“The call from the long number” arrived at five in the afternoon and, at half past eleven at night, Manuela entered the operating room. Before confirming that she was compatible, they did a lot of tests in the Andalusian capital. “It had to be done in hours. The heart is the only organ that can only be donated when brain death is established. You have to keep it beating until you reach mine”explains La Haba.
He woke up two days later. The first thing she thought is that she wanted to see the scar that she had on her chest after so long wanting her every time she looked in the mirror. “It may sound strange, but I knew that if I had it I would be alive again. They say that it is very little noticeable, but I would not mind if it was more noticeable”he confesses with a smile.
An image of Manuela in the hospital with her son.
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Another thing that shocked him a lot was how fast his heart was beating. “They did not let me sleep the beats. It was something impressive and it made me very happy”, account excited. Every time she talks about the intervention, she notices that it speeds up especially. “I tell my heart my baby. When he knows I’m talking about him, it speeds up a lot. It’s something very special. The doctors tell me that it is my heart, but I say that it is its beats, that make me live“, dice.
Manuela spent a month in the hospital. She spent a week in the ICU and the rest of the days in isolation. “I spent more time in the hospital because they had touched me a little bit the pleura of the lung and fat entered. It was something foreign to the heart. Everything went well with the operation.”
The family
Manuela takes credit when she takes a look at her past. “My husband and son have been the real sufferers in this battle,” she firmly acknowledges. Both have acknowledged that she had a hard time seeing how she turned off before receiving her heart. They have confessed to her that they saw how she was dying, but they couldn’t tell her at the time. “They have always encouraged me a lot despite the fact that I was fading away”bill.
Manuela and her sufferers, her husband and son.
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The night of the operation they both stayed outside, crying. They were aware that any unforeseen event could happen, as in any intervention. The worst thing Manuela has had in all these years is thinking that she could miss her son at some point, who is now 28 years old. “He had already finished university when they transplanted me. He was great, but he needed his mother. And he still needs me!”dice.
Thus, he believes that his son’s mentality has changed a lot as a result of everything that has happened. He believes that he values life more after seeing how his mother had almost died. “He’s more protective, more familiar and much more mature.”
Manuela herself conceives everything she has experienced as “an apprenticeship that forms part of my character and values”. She tries to apply it in her volunteering in The Association of Superheroes A Child A Smilewhere disguised as Catwoman encourages children on the fourth floor of the Maternal and Child Hospital, dedicated to oncology. They also visit the little ones who are on dialysis. “As I know what it is to live the same in a time when pediatric oncology did not exist, I feel that I can understand them and their parents a lot“, he reports.
The sport
Manuela, on the run.
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Before the transplant, Manuela had never been interested in sports. No one in her family practices it. However, in ICU something in her told her that she had to ride a bike. She gave him a lot of desire. “As soon as I could I bought a bike and I realized that it was my thing”, He says. Now it is one of her passions.
Sometimes he thinks that the heart that was transplanted was from a cyclist. “I really don’t want to know. But it’s not normal, I see something related to cycling and I drool”confesses laughing.
This Sunday he was part of the 1st Race for Donation, Transplantation and Life ‘Memorial Vicente Granados’, created to make the population aware of the importance of donating. Despite this, Manuela believes that “Spain is a very supportive country” in this sense and that the most important thing is to continue creating campaigns of this type.
She finished the race hand in hand with another transplanted colleague. Manuela blew a kiss to the sky as she reached the finish line as she casually sounded that you give me by Pau Donés. “We are two hearts that continue to beat thanks to the generosity of the donors,” declares Manuela, whose testimony is a hymn to life.
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