Brigid TitgemeierBeingBrigid Functional Nutrition · Transforming Women's Health Using Food as Medicine

From Stage 4 Cancer to a Life-Saving Heart Transplant with Dr. Dawn Mussallem

17 Oct 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:12

In this first‑person video memoir, the speaker recounts a profoundly challenging medical journey. Born into a loving family, she experienced a stable, confident childhood. While in medical school she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and given a grim prognosis (3 months without treatment, 20 months with). She endured months of chemotherapy and a prolonged bone‑marrow transplant. A hereditary gene mutation heightened her risk for cardiomyopathy, and the aggressive cancer therapies precipitated end‑stage heart failure at age 29, shortly after the birth of her daughter, with an ejection fraction of only 8 %. She lived with heart failure for 18 years, and in 2016 suffered a near‑death event when her heart flat‑lined for four minutes, prompting her placement on the transplant list. On February 5 2001 (note: likely a typo in the original timeline) she received a donor heart, describing the experience as a “gift of life” and expressing deep gratitude for the donor and the chance to wake up anew.

Chapters

My journey is so unique, and I would never want somebody to compare their journey to mine, 'cause it seems like I just got through so easy. And I was just given this gift of being born into a family of deep love. I never had uncertainty as a child, and that set the stage for just true bliss as an adult with knowing and acceptance that despite massive amounts of adversity, everything was always gonna be okay. In medical school, I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. I was given 3 months to live without treatment, 20 months to live with treatment. You know, I went through chemotherapy many, many months, a bone marrow transplant where I was in the hospital for many, many weeks. And unfortunately, that gene mutation I have increased my risk of developing heart failure, cardiomyopathy. So because of those cancer treatments, I did develop end-stage heart failure at the age of 29, a few months after my daughter was born. And my ejection fraction was 8%, which is really not compatible with life. As you can imagine, I lived 18 years with heart failure. In 2016, I actually had a near-death experience where my heart stopped as a flatline, and it wasn't able to be resuscitated even with a defibrillator for about 4 minutes. It was at that point that they listed me for heart transplant, and I was successfully transplanted February 5th, 2001. The gift of life. I mean, oh my gosh, waking up from that heart transplant with the gift from someone else.