Mom Endures Heart Transplant In Newark, Returns For Son’s 1st Birthday

NEWARK, NJ — It’s a rewarding experience to be a “walking miracle” of medical science. But it’s even better to make it out of the hospital after a heart transplant – just in time for your son’s first birthday.

Earlier this week, Naiya Atkins left Newark Beth Israel Medical Center after a harrowing battle with a near-fatal heart condition. It marked a big milestone for the 37-year-old, first-time mother, who had given birth to her son, Joseph, less than a year earlier.

It all started in February 2023 – just a few weeks after giving birth – when Atkins began experiencing severe dizziness and nausea at 2 a.m. She wasn’t in pain, but her mother called her an ambulance anyway, as she’d been having trouble controlling her blood pressure.

Emergency responders rushed Atkins to Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, where she got a terrifying diagnosis: she was having a heart attack.

Eventually, Atkins’ medial team diagnosed her with a rare condition, Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection, which meant that her artery walls were spontaneously tearing – blocking blood flow to the heart.

Doctors removed the blockages to Atkins’ heart and gave her medication, then sent her to the intensive care unit. But within an hour, she went into cardiac arrest.

Atkins was immediately resuscitated, but her heart would never be the same, hospital administrators said.

The hospital’s Advanced Heart Failure Treatment and Transplant team implanted a balloon pump and placed Atkins on intravenous medications, but her heart was operating at just 15 percent. By September, her other organs were beginning to fail, leaving a transplant as the only option.

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Atkins was admitted to Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in November and put on the waiting list for a transplant. She spent the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays in the hospital, away from her family and her newborn, who they’d affectionately nicknamed “JoJo.”

Atkins finally got the call that a new heart was available on Jan. 5. The next day, Margarita Camacho – the hospital’s decorated surgical director of heart transplants – performed the life-saving operation.

She finally left Newark Beth Israel Medical Center on Jan. 31, a day before her son’s first birthday (watch the video below).

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