Georgia 4-year-old thriving after receiving a healthy new heart

ATLANTA - Mesha Washington loves seeing her 4-year-old Kalani Thornton acting like herself again.

The Jonesboro girl recently started back at her daycare after nearly a year away and has been able to come off her feeding tube.

"She is a bubbly, nice, energetic girl, loves to sing and dance, loves to learn," Washington says. "She's sassy."

It's been 3 months since Kalani Thornton's heart transplant, and a couple of years since Washington and Kalani's father, Taurus Thornton, began to notice Kalani could not seem to shake an asthma-like cough.

Girl rushed to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta ER

By May 2023, Kalani was struggling.

"She had a low appetite, no appetite, just poor eating, very fatigued, a dry (cough), and shortness of breath," her mother says.

When she spiked a fever, they took Kalani to the emergency department at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite, where a doctor diagnosed her with a rhinovirus, a cold-like virus.

Mesha Washington says the doctor could see something deeper was affecting her daughter.

"Because she was, like, slumped over in the bed, she was literally just not moving, he asked if he could get a chest x-ray," she says.

Georgia toddler diagnosed with acute heart failure

That is when they saw it, Kalani's heart was enlarged, something known as cardiomyopathy.

"Her heart was, it was really, really big, and it was not a good heart," Mesha Washington says.

Kalani, in acute heart failure, was quickly admitted to the cardiac ICU at Children's Healthcare.

Charissa Deckelmann, a pediatric nurse practitioner with the advanced cardiac therapies team at Children's, was one of the providers assigned to Thornton's team.

"The first question parents ask is, 'Did I miss something?'" Deckelmann says.

She reassured Kalani's parents they were not to blame, explaining to them, they would try to treat the then 3-year-old with oral or IV medications to stabilize her heart.

When the medication did not help, Deckelmann and the team met with Kalani's parents to talk about the next step.

"They put us in a room, me and her dad, and were kind of like, 'This is getting serious. The medicine is not working,'" Washington remembers.

Georgia girl put on heart transplant list

Kalani, they were told, was running out of options and needed a heart transplant.

"There were a lot of questions and a lot of tears from the family," Deckelmann says.

In late May, Kalani Thornton was placed on a heart transplant waiting list.

She was listed as a Status 1B, which meant she was critically ill, but was eventually able to go home from the hospital with a small backpack pump that would deliver medication to help her heart pump.

Washington and Thornton were told the wait for a new heart could take weeks or months.

"The families never know when this phone call is going to happen," Deckelmann says. "So, we always have them have their phones on them at all times and be available."

Nearly 7 months after she was listed, on December 13, 2023, the phone rang.

It was about 9 p.m.

A heart had been found for Kalani.

"We were all just freaking out," Washington says. "We all just started grabbing suitcases, and she had on her pajamas."

4-year-old Georgia girl gets new heart

The next evening at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, Kalani Thornton received a healthy new heart, donated anonymously by a family losing a child.

Hours later, in the cardiac ICU, Washington and Thornton were reunited with their daughter.

"Kalani was still intubated, with her chest tubes in, and it was just a lot to see her like that," Washington says. "But she opened her eyes, and she opened her eyes and she grabbed my hand."

Within a few days, she was up and walking.

"It was amazing, incredible," Deckelmann says. "She did remarkably. She left the hospital after just a little over a week."

Kalani Thornton now comes back for checkups with the advanced cardiac therapies team.

And Deckelmann says, the heart recipient families often ask about their donor families.

"I've had a family mention that they want it to record their child's heartbeat, so they could send it to the donor family, and let them know that their family member's life continues on," Deckelmann says.

Mesha Washington says they have explained the transplant process to Kalani, and she understands her heart is a gift.

"She's very thankful for the donor (family)," Washington says. "And she prays for them, she prays for them."