Heart transplant means a second chance for Gowanda teen
GOWANDA – The weather’s finally nice, windows are open in classrooms and students are anxiously tapping their pens, itching with summer fever. Summer is just around the corner, and fierce cases of senioritis are springing up all around the school. It’s “the end” for the students, so how could it possibly be the beginning for someone else? Combining the words “heart” and “transplant” provide a very valid reason as to why.
Last fall, Jordan Rebmann’s parents thought he had a cold. To quote his father Bob Rebmann, “back to school, back to the bug.”
That “cold” made Jordan Rebmann undergo one of the 2,000 heart transplants that occur each year in the United States. Rebmann, who was 15 years old at the time and just barely a sophomore in high school, received a healthy heart to replace the heart he had been born with.
Hospitals and tests were nothing new to Jordan. Early in his life, he was diagnosed with JDMS, which is a tissue disorder. It is characterized by inflammatory and degenerative changes of the muscles and skin.
In mid-October, doctors discovered that Jordan would need a transplant. “They don’t know why – they felt I was too weak for a biopsy of my heart to look at it,” said Jordan.
“We had to do what we had to do,” said his father.
After only four days on the waiting list for a transplant, on Oct. 20, Jordan received his new heart in the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. “Awesome – wow,” said Jordan’s father when asked about his reaction to the great news that a heart was available. “We gained something from it, though someone else lost a life.”
“The entire process took about two months total,” Jordan said. And the actual surgery to transplant the heart? “Three hours,” he answered.
Jordan spent those two months in the Pittsburgh hospital. During that time, a Lap-A-Thon fundraiser was held at Hillis Field in Gowanda to help pay for the extreme medical expenses involved with Jordan’s surgery, hospital care and stay. “It went real well. People walked laps and we auctioned and sold stuff,” said Jordan’s father. “We raised around $13,000.”
Most teenagers never face problems quite as serious as this. How does one learn to stay positive? “My mom and dad helped pull me through especially, and also my friends and family,” said Jordan. “The hardest thing about the transplant was sitting in the hospital day after day going through pain.”
“Jordan received a lot of posters and cards and stuff – it made his day when he got mail,” said Jordan’s father.
Jordan’s little sister Felicia, a seventh-grader at Gowanda, has been very supportive. “With Jordan’s condition, you worry about her getting shoved aside, but she’s always been very helpful,” Jordan’s father noted. “It’s a long waiting thing, but she wants to be a part of it.”
The Upstate New York Transplant Services Web site says that currently in the United States there are well over 100,000 people waiting for organ donations.
Jordan was one of the lucky ones to receive an organ that was compatible with his blood type and body size. Not everyone is as fortunate.
“The doctor told us waiting could be two days or two months, but he needed it,” said Jordan’s father.
Jordan missed more than six months of school and was tutored at home.
He finally returned to school in late April. “We wanted to get him back to school and get him ready for the summer Regents exams,” said his father.
Jordan was happy to be back. “I finally got to see my friends,” he said.
Welcoming Jordan back was a banner in the main lobby that nearly everybody in the school took the time to sign during lunch periods.
At the school’s annual G-Town Showdown (the Gowanda version of a talent show), Jordan received a standing ovation when his name was called to pick one of the prizes from the front of the auditorium.
Jordan has taken on no new strange characteristics with his new heart. “None except for EBV [Epstein-Barr virus] which is a kind of mono so I have to watch my white blood count,” he said. Jordan now has to take two pills of anti-rejection medications twice a day. These medications (Prograf and CellCept) should help keep his body from rejecting his new heart.
At only 15, Jordan Rebmann faced something more challenging than most people experience in their entire lifetimes. He flew on with flying colors, and is back in school, all in one perfectly functioning and whole piece. “Life looks better now,” he said, and “yeah, I’d meet the family of the donor who gave me my heart – but only if I had to.”
Emily Steves is a sophomore at Gowanda High School.
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