Chandra Jackson sat up in a chair Tuesday afternoon in her room in Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Cardiovascular Progressive Care Unit, draped in a colorful blanket and clutching a heart-shaped pillow covered in supportive messages from her care team.
Bubbly and bright by nature, Jackson flashed a smile that was perhaps bigger Tuesday than any other day.
“Today’s the day,” she said. “It was nothing but God.”
After 10 months in the hospital, the 68-year-old Baltimore native was going home. Home just in time for Christmas. Home to see a house remodeled after a fire gutted it shortly before her hospitalization. Home with hopes of regaining her strength so that, come spring, she can rejoin her beloved Annapolis Dragon Boat Club.
Her discharge was never guaranteed.
Heart failure caused by drugs used to treat her breast cancer decades ago sent her to the hospital. When a first heart transplant didn’t take, she required another. Complications from her grave illness included renal failure and a blood clot. At times during her hospitalization, she couldn’t move, eat or talk. She lost 35 pounds.
“During the period where she was very sick, I was worried that we would lose her,” said Dr. Lili Barouch, one of Jackson’s cardiologists at Hopkins. “But knowing the type of person that she is, I knew she could make it through.”
Jackson’s breast cancer was diagnosed around 2003. Her treatment required a mastectomy and chemotherapy. Her medication regimen included the drug Adriamycin, which kills cancer but comes with serious side effects. Chief among them: heart damage that can lead to heart failure during treatment or even years later.
A special education teacher who worked with students with autism, Jackson said she taught in Baltimore throughout her treatment.
She retired about six years ago, focusing on traveling and a newfound passion.
About a decade ago, a friend told her about the Chinese sport of dragon boating. She started paddling with a team in Baltimore before learning about the Annapolis Dragon Boat Club’s team of breast cancer survivors. Still a novice, she joined.
“I was scared to death,” Jackson recalled. “Oh my God, because I was clicking paddles. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was going to quit. But my husband told me, ‘If you don’t go back now, you’ll never go back.’ I went back, and I’ve been loving it since.”
The Annapolis club hosts casual paddles for those who just want a little exercise and racing practices for those who want to compete. She loved the serenity of being on the water, and, once she got the hang of the paddling stroke, she was drawn to competition.
“I’m a racer,” she declared from her hospital bed Dec. 4.
Little did she know that dragon boating would save her life.
About a year ago, Jackson was feeling persistently fatigued. She knew something wasn’t right but kept going to dragon boat practice and working out with her personal trainer.
“But in those last few months,” she recalled, “I couldn’t walk down the street.”
Jackson remembered going to a heart failure specialist, who gave her some difficult news: She needed to go to the hospital for a biopsy because she likely needed a new heart.
It was “very scary,” Jackson said. “But I’m very spiritual and I guess God had to get my attention. And I want to live.”
She said she went to the hospital on March 19 and they wouldn’t let her leave because, as Jackson put it: “I was about to not be here.”
Doctors sent her to the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit to wait for a new heart.
“My God is good, and I only had to wait two weeks or less,” Jackson said.
But another setback occurred shortly thereafter: The first heart also failed, so she needed another transplant.
“She got very sick while she was waiting for the second transplant,” Barouch said. “When the heart’s not working properly, a lot of the other organs aren’t getting enough blood flow.”
In Jackson’s case, the casualty was her kidney function, meaning she needed dialysis. Another setback.
Barouch said athletes like Jackson are more likely to recognize the signs of heart failure early. She also said they’re more likely to withstand grueling heart transplants.
“She has the determination of an athlete in all aspects of her life,” Barouch said. “I think that’s probably what carried her through when things got really tough.”
Marisa Antinori, a Hopkins nurse who helped treat Jackson, said most patients in Jackson’s shoes “get really demoralized,” but she was “the brightest light.”
“Everything that could’ve gone wrong for her has gone wrong,” Antinori said. “She was always willing to do whatever she had to do to progress her care.”
She was slated to be discharged about week before she went home. That day, her care team notice swelling her leg. She needed a procedure to fix a blood clot.
“You know what, I believe in the Lord,” she said after learning she wasn’t going home that day.
On Tuesday evening, Jackson got back to her rowhouse in Northeast Baltimore as members of her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority cheered for her. Inside, Christmas decorations and supportive banners welcomed her. One, from the Annapolis Dragon Boat Club, read “Welcome Home, Chandra! Paddles Up!”
Barouch said it’s “extremely unusual” for patients who were as sick as Jackson go home from the hospital rather than transition to a rehab facility.
But with a long way to go in her recovery, how will she stay motivated? She has her eyes set on the world championships of dragon boating next summer in the French Alps.
“That’s what’s been keeping me going,” Jackson said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to get in the boat. If not, I’m going anyway.”
For anyone else, that might be overly ambitious.
“We think she can do it,” Barouch said.
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