Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Girl, 7, gets heart; sister waits for one

Girl, 7, gets heart; sister waits for one"Sunday was the first day that 7-year-old Emily Smith was able to visit the hospital playroom since receiving her new heart. It is a small step to getting her life back to normal. "You can tell that she wants to play soccer but she can't. Now that she has her heart, she can," said her big sister, Shayde. Shayde is 9 and knows a bit about what Emily is going through. She has the very same condition, called restrictive cardiomyopathy, in which the heart doesn't relax as it should between pumps, so it doesn't properly fill with blood. "Less than 1 in a million are diagnosed with this type of heart disease," Dr. Kristine Guleserian of Children's Medical Center in Dallas told CBS News correspondent Hari Sreenivasen. "To have two family members, it is even more rare. To have two sisters with it who are so close in age is incredibly rare."" - CBS

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