In a single day, 21-year-old Kimberly Woods went through all kinds of matters of the heart.
Kimberly was born with a heart condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, an ailment which causes the heart muscle to thicken. This not only affected her daily life - she’d had to avoid strenuous sports, for example. At 20, she discovered she lived with the possibilities of both a sudden cardiac death from arrhythmia and dying from cardiomyopathy.
She needed a defibrillator and a heart transplant as soon as possible. Understanding how arduous it was going to be, she tried to give her boyfriend Anthony an out. He proposed instead.
In the thick of preparing the wedding, an unexpected news arrived: there was a perfect heart available for her. Unwilling to waste any time, on September 28, 2021 they got married in an intimate wedding ceremony and then drove four hours to Cleveland to undergo the surgery.
That day, Kimberly emerged out of the OR with a new healthy heart and a married life to start.
Image: Rachelle Hartman/Cleveland Clinic/Lael Nafziger Photography