CNN –

Her smile is bright, cheerful, sometimes goofy and always infectious. But the photographs cannot fully convey her optimistic, positive attitude. At 21, Claire Bridges has a mature spirit that amazes those who love her, as well as the doctors who had to operate on her heart and remove both legs to save her life.

“She had the will to live, perseverance and a kind of twinkle in her eyes — I tell all my patients that’s half the battle,” said Dr. Dean Arnaoutakis, a vascular surgeon at the University of South Florida Public Health in Tampa, who amputated Bridges. legs after complications from Covid-19.

“Most people would be depressed and feel like life has cheated them,” said Dr. Ismail El-Hamamsi, a professor of cardiovascular surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who operated on Bridges’ heart.

“But she told me: “I feel like I am the happiest person on this planet. I have my whole life ahead of me. I can have kids, a future, so many things I’m looking forward to.”

“Not once, when I looked into her eyes, did I feel that her positivity was real and sincere,” he said. “Claire’s story is one of incredible resilience and positivity.”

In January 2022, Bridges was a 20-year-old model with her own apartment, a group of friends, and a side job as a bartender in St. Petersburg, Florida. According to her mother, Kimberly Smith, she was a vegan and “exceptionally healthy”.

When she contracted Covid-19 that same month, no one expected her to be hospitalized. She was fully vaccinated and revaccinated.

But Bridges was born with a common genetic heart defect: aortic Valve stenosis, a valve mutation in the main heart artery, the aorta. Instead of three leaflets or leaflets that allow oxygen-rich blood to flow from the heart to the aorta and to the rest of the body, people with aortic valve stenosis are often born with only two. This condition makes the heart work very hard, often causing shortness of breath, dizziness, and fatigue.

“I could work out and stuff, but I could never play sports,” she told CNN. “I couldn’t run. I couldn’t overexert myself.”

Her mom added: “We can really tell that she started to know her limits as she got older – she would get out of breath, she would stop and take a break.”

Whether due to her heart or another unknown reason, Covid-19 hit Bridges hard. Her health quickly spiraled out of control.

“Very tired, cold sweats – every day it became more and more difficult to try to eat or drink anything,” she recalled. “One day my mother found that I was not answering and took me to the hospital. That night I fell three times.”

Bridges was placed on dialysis, a ventilator and an external pump for her ailing heart. She went into psychosis.

“I thought everyone was trying to kill me, but I held on,” she said, adding that she then saw a bright light and her late grandfather.

“He was sitting on a bench, fishing, and he was wearing a baseball cap,” she said. “Then I saw my parents through the window. I don’t know if that was true or if it was my delusion, but I thought, “I can’t leave them like this.” And my body literally wouldn’t give up.”

As Bridges’ spirit struggled, doctors struggled to save her life. Her organs began to shut down, further weakening her fragile heart. The blood did not reach the limbs, and the tissues of both legs began to die.

The surgeons tried to save as many of her legs as possible. First, they opened tissue from both legs to reduce swelling, and then amputated one ankle. In the end, there was no choice: both legs had to be removed.

Doctors gathered around her bed to break the news.

“I remember looking at them and saying, ‘Well, thanks for saving my life. Can I have bionic legs? Bridges said.

“Everyone was absolutely shocked that she took it so well,” Smith recalled of her daughter. “But my whole family knew that if this tragedy happened to any of us, then Claire would cope with it best of all. Cheerful and positive, that’s Claire.”

Losing her legs was just part of Bridges’ struggle to recover. “There were so many things she could have died from while she was in the hospital,” Smith said.

Due to malnutrition, Bridges was placed on a feeding tube. She vomited, tearing part of her small intestine, and “almost bled out,” Smith said. To save her, doctors had to give an emergency blood transfusion, a dangerous procedure due to her weak heart.

“She almost died during an emergency blood transfusion because they had to pump the blood so fast,” Smith said. “Then the next day she bled again, but she was caught in time.”

Bridges developed refeeding syndrome, a condition in which electrolytes, minerals, and other vital fluids in a depleted body are thrown out of balance when food is reintroduced, causing cramps, muscle and heart weakness, and in some cases, coma. Without prompt treatment, this can lead to organ failure and death.

With another stroke, her hair began to fall out, probably due to the loss of proper nutrition. Her family and friends came to her rescue.

“I knew the only way to stop crying every time I pulled strands of hair out of my head was to just get rid of them,” Bridges said. “I told my brother Drew that I was thinking about shaving my head, and without wasting a second, he immediately looked at me and said: “I will shave my head with you.”

“Then everyone started telling me that they would shave their heads too,” Bridges said with a smile. “It was actually a very sweet, fun and free time – plus I always wanted to shave my head, so I have to cross it off my wish list!”

Bridges thanks her friends and family, as well as community members who organized fundraisers or connected on social media, for her optimism throughout the trial.

“I feel very lucky to have such a wonderful family and friends and people in my community who are like family to me,” she said. “People I didn’t know, people I hadn’t spoken to since elementary or high school, approached me.

“Yes, I allowed myself to grieve, and there were dark days. But to be honest, my friends and my family showered me with so much love that I never had a second to really think about my legs or how I look now.”

Bridges’ heart was another obstacle: already fragile before her long illness, it was now severely damaged. She needed a new aortic valve, and urgently.

“We always knew that Claire would need open-heart surgery at some point,” her mother said. “The doctors wanted her to be as old as possible before they replaced the valve, because the older you are, the bigger you are, and there’s less chance of needing another operation soon after.”

Her doctors turned to Mount Sinai’s El Hamamsi, an expert in a more complex form of aortic valve replacement called the Ross procedure.

“Anyone with an estimated life expectancy of 20 years or more is definitely a potential candidate for Ross,” El-Hamamsi said, “and that’s the perfect solution for many young people like Claire.”

Unlike more traditional surgeries, in which the failed aortic valve is replaced with a mechanical or cadaveric version, the Ross procedure uses the patient’s own pulmonary valve, which is “a mirror image of a normal three-leaf aortic valve,” El-Hamamsi said.

“It’s a living valve, and like any living thing, it adapts,” the surgeon said. “It becomes like a new aortic valve and does all the very complex functions that a regular aortic valve does.”

The pulmonary valve is then replaced with a cadaver donor, “where it matters a little less because the pressure and loads on the pulmonary side are much lower,” he said.

Using a part of a patient’s own body to replace an aortic valve also eliminates the need for lifelong use of blood-thinning drugs and the constant risk of major bleeding or clotting and stroke, El-Hamamsi said. And because the new valve is stronger than the failed valve it replaces, patients are unlikely to need surgery in the future.

“Ross is the only aortic valve replacement surgery that allows patients to have a normal life expectancy,” he said, “and a completely normal quality of life with no restrictions, no change in their lifestyle, and very good longevity of the surgery.” “.

The Ross procedure is technically more complex than a tissue valve or a mechanical valve, “one of the simplest surgeries we cardiac surgeons have ever done,” El-Hamamsi said.

Since the operation requires a high level of technical skill, it is currently only available in a few surgical facilities.

“This requires dedicated surgeons who are willing to dedicate their practice to the Ross procedure and who have the technical skills and experience to do so,” he added. “Patients should be aware that they must undergo surgery at a Ross-certified facility.”

When El-Hamamsi first met Bridges over a video call last spring, he wasn’t sure he could do the surgery. Only 127 pounds before she became ill, Bridges lost almost 70 pounds during her hospitalization.

“She was very emaciated. There was no way I could take her to the operating room as she is,” El-Hamamsi said. “I never expected her to recover so quickly and maintain her amazingly positive attitude.”

Slowly, over many months, Bridges struggled with her health. In the rehabilitation center, she began to learn to walk with prosthetic lower limbs. As she got stronger, she continued to do one of her favorite activities – rock climbing.

“At six months, I hardly recognized her – she had regained her weight, her skin had completely healed from the amputations, and she looked completely different from the emaciated and weakened girl I met in the hospital. said Arnautakis, a vascular surgeon.

Heart surgery was successfully performed in December. Today, Bridges is undergoing heart rehab and is looking forward to getting prosthetic J-shaped carbon fiber lower limbs that will allow her to run on a treadmill for the first time in her life.

She also returned to modeling, proudly showing the world how well she survived.

El Hamamsi is not surprised. “I told her from the day I met her on that Zoom, ‘I’ll be so honored to take care of you because you inspire me.’ I have never met a young man with such a level of maturity and such an outlook on life.”

“I still think of Claire from time to time when I’m going through a difficult life or whatever. This is a reminder that happiness and positivity is a choice. Claire made this choice.

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