health<\/a> awareness matters.<\/p>\nOn a November morning in 1995, eight-year-old Mandi was at a sleepover with her best friend, Jessica Docio, when something went terribly wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if my memories are memories or what my mind has told me are memories,\u201d Mandi said.<\/p>\n
Jessica remembers waking up suddenly. \u201cI truly believe something woke me up,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s when I started to hear noises coming from Mandi that were abnormal and they scared me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jessica ran to her mother, a nurse, for help, then ran for her neighbor, who was a flight paramedic.<\/p>\n
Mandi\u2019s heart had stopped.<\/p>\n
Paramedics shocked her heart four times before finally restoring her pulse. Mandi\u2019s mother, Jeanne Tate, was already at work that morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first call that I got, they thought that she was gone because paramedics tried to revive her four times,\u201d Tate said.<\/p>\n
Mandi was rushed to Tampa General Hospital, where doctors determined a virus had attacked her heart. She would need a transplant to survive.<\/p>\n
On December 15, 1995, a new heart arrived. The donor was a 10-year-old boy in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor many years, I wrote to them annually and told them about Mandi,\u201d Tate said. \u201cI wanted them to know the gift that they had given us. And now Mandi writes them.\u201d<\/p>\n
That gift has been measured not just in years, but in milestones. Thirty years later, Mandi is still living with the same transplanted heart, which is rare.<\/p>\n
She is now a mother of two, a dream made possible through surrogacy after pregnancy was deemed too risky for her heart.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a reminder of how precious life is and what can and can\u2019t happen,\u201d Mandi said. Every year, she celebrates her \u201cheart birthday,\u201d but survival isn\u2019t simple.<\/p>\n
Caring for her heart requires constant vigilance. Mandi takes daily medication, sees specialists regularly and pays close attention to her body. If something feels off, she doesn\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, just be aware. Be aware. And if something doesn\u2019t feel right, get it checked out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Heart disease doesn\u2019t always look the way people expect, especially in women.<\/p>\n
Mandi is sharing her story to raise awareness about heart health, organ donation and the reality of life decades after transplant.<\/p>\n
Jessica is still by her side, the two forever bonded by the night that changed everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cMan, it\u2019s been a journey,\u201d Jessica said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a journey,\u201d Mandi said.<\/p>\n
And three decades after nearly losing her life, Mandi hopes her story encourages you to listen to your heart.<\/p>\n
Supporting the Go Red for Women movement is easy. To learn more about heart health and the simple changes you can make at your own pace, visit the American Heart Association at heart.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a November morning in 1995, a little girl in Tampa was fighting for her life. 30 years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-160844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}